Mexico can use a multibillion dollar transfer from the International Monetary Fund to prepay debt, as the country’s president is considering, but the government would need to purchase the funds from the central bank, Banxico Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon said, Bloomberg News reported. The IMF’s transfer to the central bank of the recently-approved reserves, worth roughly $12 billion, isn’t a “donation,” Diaz de Leon said in an interview late Thursday.

Thousands of small and medium-sized Cuban businesses will be allowed to incorporate in the coming months, in one of the most important economic reforms taken by the island's Communist government since it nationalized all enterprises in the 1960s, Reuters reported. The reform, details of which came to light this week, will permit small and medium-sized businesses for the first time since 1968, putting an end to the legal limbo in which many have existed for years in the Soviet-style economy.

Over six months after Laurentian entered insolvency proceedings, the Sudbury, Ont., university has published a draft framework for claims to be submitted by faculty, staff and employees affected by restructuring — but one of the parties says the details aren't finalized and negotiations are ongoing, CBC reported. All parties are due before a judge next on Tuesday for a discussion on the compensation methodology.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning a snap election for Sept. 20 to seek voter approval for the government's costly plans to combat COVID-19, Retuers reported. Trudeau is set to make the announcement on Sunday, according to sources. Trudeau aides have said for months that the ruling Liberals would push for a vote before end-2021, two years ahead of schedule. Trudeau only has a minority government and relies on other parties to push through legislation. In recent months he has complained about what he calls opposition obstruction.

Two meetings of groups of creditors of indebted Ocho Rios attraction Mystic Mountain Limited, MML, held during the past week, have failed to resolve issues related to whether the beleaguered company will be declared bankrupt and its assets sold off to repay bondholders and other persons and institutions it owes money, the Jamaican Gleaner reported. Unresolved, too, is whether MML's changing payment proposal to settle its debt will be accepted by the creditors. Likewise, the status of the trustee the company chose to oversee that process is still not settled.

Mexico is considering using its share of recently-approved International Monetary Fund reserves, worth about $12 billion, to repay the country’s debts, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, Bloomberg News reported. Although the funds add to the central bank reserves, Mexico has enough bandwidth to use them to pay down debt, Lopez Obrador said at a daily press conference Wednesday. “The reserves have grown a lot and they pay very little interest,” he said.

Qatar National Bank QPSC, the Middle East’s biggest lender, asked a U.S. court to order Eritrea to pay nearly $300 million of debt after the Horn of Africa nation refused to participate in two lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported. The Doha-based bank requested a judgment by default from a federal court in Washington on Friday after Eritrea failed to respond to the bank’s claim seeking to enforce a U.K. ruling in 2019. QNB alleges that President Isaias Afwerki’s government went to drastic lengths to avoid being served with key documents.

Bayer lost a third appeal against U.S. court verdicts that awarded damages to customers blaming their cancers on use of its glyphosate-based weedkillers, leaving the German drugs and pesticides group to pin hopes for legal relief on the U.S. Supreme Court, Reuters reported. A California appeals court yesterday upheld an $86 million verdict that found Bayer responsible for a couple's cancer after using Bayer's glyphosate-based Roundup against weeds.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. made a new, higher bid for Kansas City Southern, looking to derail the U.S. railroad’s pending merger with rival Canadian National Railway Co. ahead of an important shareholder vote less than two weeks away, Bloomberg News reported. The offer is $300 a share, Canadian Pacific said in a statement Tuesday, or about $27 billion in equity value. While that’s higher than its original $25 billion bid from March, the new price doesn’t match the $30 billion deal that Kansas City Southern’s board accepted from Canadian National in May.