Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. is prepared to inject as much as 5 billion rand ($386 million) to pay off bank debt owed by AfriSam Group Pty Ltd. and help South Africa’s second-biggest cement producer clinch a tie-up with larger rival PPC Ltd., according to two people familiar with the matter. The money from the African unit of the Canadian insurer will be used to repay bank loans and allow AfriSam to push through a new offer to PPC, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private, Bloomberg News reported.

Mexican construction company ICA said late on Friday it and its subsidiaries had filed a pre-packaged bankruptcy plan that had been subscribed to by the majority of its creditors, Reuters reported. ICA, which has been struggling under a high dollar-denominated debt load, said the plan had been filed in accordance with the statutes of Mexican bankruptcy law. Read more.

Shares in Seadrill, the oil rig owner controlled by influential shipowner John Fredriksen, sank on Thursday after it said it plans to begin its Chapter 11 debt restructuring in the coming weeks, and revealed a $100m loss in the second quarter, the Financial Times reported. Seadrill has struggled since the 2014 oil price crash, and has been eyeing Chapter 11 proceedings since the beginning of this year. It said on Thursday it plans to conclude negotiations on its restructuring, which is “likely” to involve bankruptcy, “on or before September 12″.

Sears Canada Inc.’s top executive is preparing an offer to save the bankrupt company from liquidation, The Wall Street Journal reported. Executive Chairman Brandon Stranzl intends to submit an offer for Sears Canada that would preserve the company as a going concern, according to a Wednesday memorandum filed in its insolvency proceedings. The retailer filed for protection from creditors in June under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, Canada’s equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy.

At least four individuals have filed whistleblower complaints with Canadian securities regulators alleging fraud at a multibillion-dollar investment firm and its publicly traded lending arm, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Catalyst Capital Group Inc., one of Canada’s largest private-equity firms, is accused in the complaints of artificially inflating the value of some of its assets and deceiving borrowers about the terms of loans it made, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A battle over whether energy-company creditors should help pay for cleaning up thousands of abandoned oil wells in Canada may be heading to the country’s Supreme Court, Bloomberg News reported. At the center of the dispute is Redwater Energy Corp., a small publicly traded oil producer in Alberta that filed for bankruptcy in late 2015. The receiver that’s liquidating the company argues it should be able to sell its best wells and leave the worst behind for an energy industry-funded group to clean up.

Offshore drilling contractor Seadrill again delayed restructuring its $14 billion in debt and liabilities on Wednesday and reiterated that Chapter 11 bankruptcy was likely. Once the biggest offshore rig firm by market value and the crown jewel in the business empire of Norwegian billionaire John Fredriksen, Seadrill shares have fallen 99 percent from a September 2013 peak, Reuters reported. The company's business has struggled as energy firms have slashed investment due to a more than 50 percent fall in the price of crude oil since 2014.

Sears Canada Inc was granted court approval on Thursday to proceed with a sale process that would allow the retailer to consider a range of potential deals, according to court documents. A report by the court-appointed monitor FTI Consulting posted on its website on Wednesday said that more than 20 parties have signed non-disclosure agreements with Sears Canada as part of the planned sale process, Reuters reported.

Sears Canada Inc majority shareholders including Edward Lampert, ESL Investments Inc and Fairholme Capital Management LLC are seeking access to internal documents related to its restructuring, according to a notice of motion posted on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The court motion, which will be made on Thursday in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, comes as the court-appointed monitor FTI Consulting said more than 20 parties have signed non-disclosure agreements with Sears Canada. The retailer was still negotiating non-disclosure agreements with ESL and Fairholme.

A global sell off in the bond market spread to equities on Thursday amid fears that the post-crisis era of easy money from the world’s largest central banks was coming to an end. While bond yields remain exceptionally low, recent remarks by the heads of the European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada have convinced many investors the period of historically-low interest rates and unprecedented central bank bond buying will soon recede, the Financial Times reported.