An unusual number of cannabis companies have used a Canadian corporate insolvency law called the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in 2022, a trend that demonstrates both the marijuana industry’s financial challenges and one possible solution to keep businesses from slipping completely underwater, MJBizDaily reported. Fourteen of the 35 CCAA filings in Canada – or 40% – between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22 have involved companies operating in the cannabis space in one way or another.

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Employees who work overseas for U.S.-based companies are not protected by a federal law prohibiting retaliation against whistleblowers who raise concerns about violations of securities laws, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday, Reuters reported. A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected a bid by Christopher Garvey, a former top Asia-based lawyer for Morgan Stanley, to revive claims that he was forced to resign in 2016 after reporting alleged illegal activities that predominantly occurred outside the U.S.

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To facilitate the ongoing process to sell its businesses, DCL Corporation (DCL or the Company), a leading manufacturer and reseller of color pigments, announced that on Dec. 20, its U.S.-based subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for a court-supervised reorganization under chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, according to a press release. Contemporaneously, the company and its Canadian subsidiaries have also commenced court-supervised restructuring proceedings in Canada under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, R.S.C. 1985, c.

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Now that the Cirque du Soleil has rebounded from its near-death experience during the pandemic, Duncan Fisher can wax philosophical about the wild roller-coaster ride the Montreal-based circus company went through over the past few years, the Montréal Gazette reported. “It was the worst, then it developed into the best time of my business career,” Fisher said in an interview Wednesday. The vice president of operations and general manager of the touring show division of the Cirque du Soleil paraphrased Charles Dickens, saying it was both the best of times and the worst of times.

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A Sault-area aerospace firm hopes to emerge from insolvency under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act through the sale of the company by April, CTVNorthernOntario.ca reported. Springer, an aircraft maintenance company in Echo Bay, has been open since 1972 and employs 100 people. It occupies about 210 acres and includes three hangers and an airport that includes a main runway that is large enough to accommodate Boeing 737s for landing and takeoff, according to court documents filed under the CCAA process. Like a lot of businesses, it was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Canada’s inflation rate decelerated in November, but key gauges of underlying price pressures trended higher, increasing the likelihood of the central bank raising interest rates again, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index rose 6.8% from a year ago, higher than economist expectations of 6.7% and down from 6.9% in October, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday in Ottawa. On a monthly basis, the index gained 0.1% in November, exceeding forecasts for no change.
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Mexico's economy likely contracted by 0.1% in November compared with the previous month, a preliminary estimate from national statistics agency INEGI showed on Monday, Reuters reported. The probable drop in activity follows months of aggressive monetary policy tightening in Mexico, rising core inflation and signs of an economic slowdown in the United States. Compared with the same month a year earlier, the economy was estimated to have grown by 4.2% in November. Mexico's economy expanded by 0.9% in the third quarter from the previous three-month period.
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The number of vacant jobs in Canada fell for the first time since the pandemic, easing from record highs in a possible turning point for the country’s labor market, Bloomberg News reported. Openings fell 3.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis to 959,615 in the third quarter, Statistics Canada reported Monday. That’s probably the first quarterly decline in vacancies in more than two years, though the agency didn’t collect figures in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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A dual citizen of Sweden and the United Kingdom pleaded guilty to U.S. fraud and money laundering charges on Friday for selling a fake cryptocurrency alongside one of the United States' most-wanted fugitives, a woman referred to as the 'Cryptoqueen,' Reuters reported. Karl Greenwood, 45, was arrested in Thailand and extradited to the United States in 2018 for his role in selling the purported cryptocurrency OneCoin, which federal prosecutors in Manhattan call a pyramid scheme that defrauded investors out of $4 billion. He has been detained since his arrest.
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