North America

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will propose changes for the World Bank and regional development banks Thursday, pushing them to move beyond country-specific loans to address global threats and speed the flow of private capital to poor and emerging economies, Bloomberg News reported. “The evolution of these banks will require changes to incentives, operating models and uses of the banks’ financial resources,” Yellen plans to say in a speech she’s scheduled to deliver in Washington at the Center for Global Development think tank. Portions of the remarks were seen by Bloomberg News.

The Biden administration is preparing to scale down sanctions on Venezuela’s authoritarian regime to allow Chevron Corp. to resume pumping oil there, paving the way for a potential reopening of U.S. and European markets to oil exports from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal reported. In exchange for the significant sanctions relief, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would resume long-suspended talks with the country’s opposition to discuss conditions needed to hold free and fair presidential elections in 2024, the people said.

Late one Saturday night in April 2021, a Mexico City-based payroll lender proved Alexis Panton right, Bloomberg News reported. A year into the pandemic, Panton, who was then a debt strategist in New York for Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., had been snarkily warning that the math underlying Crédito Real SAB de CV didn’t add up. Hedge funds and big banks had ignored him, instead backing the company, a rising star of Mexico’s shadow banking industry that borrowed cash from big-time foreign investors and cut smaller loans to low-income people and businesses.

The world sorely needs more grains and Canada has a bin-busting harvest this year -- but shippers fear there aren’t enough rail cars to transport it all, Bloomberg News reported. There were almost 2,400 outstanding grain-car orders for the nation’s two major carriers, Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., according to the latest data from Ag Transport Coalition. “We have to make up these orders,” Wade Sobkowich, executive director of the Winnipeg-based Western Grain Elevator Association, said Tuesday in a phone interview.

Canadian manufacturing activity contracted for a second straight month in September as higher borrowing costs and an uncertain economic outlook contributed to a drop in new orders, but the pace of decline lessened, data showed on Monday, Reuters reported. The S&P Global Canada Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) rose to a seasonally adjusted 49.8 in September after falling to 48.7 in August, its lowest level since June 2020. A reading below 50 shows contraction in the sector.

Mexican officials on Monday announced the details of a new deal with companies to halt rising food prices, doubling down on a collaborative effort with the private sector as inflation hovers at a 22-year high, Reuters reported. More than a dozen foodmakers and retailers are part of the plan, which will waive certain regulatory requirements, Mexican Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O said.

Laurentian University plans to ask permission to finally make public letters between LU and the province that were sealed by the courts at the beginning of its insolvency in early 2021, Sudbury.com reported. On Sept. 14, the university’s creditors voted narrowly in favour of Laurentian University’s plan of arrangement, allowing Laurentian to clear a major hurdle to finally being able to exit creditor protection. A plan of arrangement is essentially a plan put forward by an insolvent organization to pay out its creditors, and it must be approved by these creditors.

The commercial hub of Delaware is blocking startup ventures with past ties to Russia from maintaining their corporate standing in the state, ensnaring some tech firms that say they have little or no current connection to Russia following its invasion of Ukraine, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported.

The Bank of Mexico hiked its key interest rate on Thursday by 75 basis points to a record 9.25%, in line with forecasts and following in the footsteps of the U.S. Federal Reserve's own recent three-quarter of a percentage point increase, Reuters reported.

The Bank of Canada will begin publishing a minutes-like summary of deliberations by officials after each policy decision in an effort to enhance transparency as it faces one of the most severe tests of its credibility, Bloomberg News reported. The move comes in response to a review by the International Monetary Fund, released on Wednesday, of the central bank’s transparency practices. The Bank of Canada said it will produce summaries roughly two weeks after each policy meeting, starting with the Jan. 25 decision.