The opening of the $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega-resort in the Bahamas is expected to be delayed beyond the start of the Christmas season, with the developer deep in an escalating legal battle with the Chinese companies that are providing most of the finance and construction work, Reuters reported. Even if construction on the unfinished resort resumed this month, there is little chance the project could be completed by mid-December, the start of the high season for Bahamas resorts, according to local contractors who have worked on the project.

Toronto’s housing market faces a high risk of a correction as soaring home prices have outstripped income growth even as the city is facing a rising supply of unsold condos, Canada’s federal housing agency warned, The Globe and Mail reported. In a new quarterly forecast on the housing market, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. said it is upgrading the risk of “problematic conditions” in the country’s largest housing market to “high” from “moderate” because it saw evidence the market was heating up this year even though home prices are already overpriced.

Mexico’s central bank on Wednesday cut its growth outlook for this year, putting pressure on the bank to keep interest rates low as long as possible despite a weak peso, The Wall Street Journal reported. In its quarterly inflation report, the Bank of Mexico slashed its growth estimate to between 1.7% and 2.5% from the previous range of 2% to 3%. If the estimate proves right, it would be a hard blow for President Enrique Peña Nieto. The midpoint of the latest estimate—2.1% growth—means Latin America’s second-largest economy would expand this year at the same pace as in 2014.

Canadian women's fashion retailer Laura's Shoppe, which owns Laura, Laura Petites and Melanie Lyne, has filed for creditor protection, CBC.ca reported. The company, with more than 150 stores across the country, said it expects to close some underperforming stores but plans to keep doing business as usual while it restructures. Laura admits it experienced large losses in 2012 and 2013, but president Kalman Fisher said sales have since rebounded. A filing under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act protects the retailer from claims by creditors while it revamps its operations.

Mexico, a middle-income but highly unequal country, is betting on sweeping structural reforms to catapult it into the big league of advanced economies. But it is not winning the battle against poverty and has not been for the past quarter of a century, despite economic growth and its membership of the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). That is the stark conclusion to be drawn from a new bi-annual report from Coneval, a Mexican government agency charged with evaluating social policies.

The cost of completing the stalled $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega-resort in the Bahamas has risen to $400 million, according to a letter from the project's developer. Baha Mar Ltd, run by Sarkis Izmirlian, has offered to invest $200 million in the project alongside the resort's main lender, China's Export-Import Bank, according to a letter viewed by Reuters.

A replacement lender for U.S. Steel Canada that will in effect double the cost of keeping two Canadian steel plants afloat was approved by a Toronto court Friday, CBC.ca reported. The application from USSC to replace its parent company, U.S. Steel (USS) with the new lenders, Brookfield Capital Partners, could cost the company $9.25 million, plus administration costs.

The developer of the $3.5 billion Baha Mar mega-resort is willing to commit up to $200 million to jumpstart the stalled Bahamas project, lawyers told a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Thursday. Baha Mar, which will feature a Las Vegas-style casino and more than 2,000 hotel rooms, is nearly complete, but construction stopped several months ago because of a dispute between the developer and the main contractor, Chinese State Construction Engineering Corp Ltd's China Construction America.

A judge in the Bahamas has declined to recognize the U.S. bankruptcy filing by Baha Mar Ltd, the developer of a $3.5 billion mega resort, a source familiar with the ruling said on Wednesday. Recognition of the Chapter 11 U.S. bankruptcy filing would have prevented creditors from taking action against Baha Mar Ltd in the Bahamas. The decision by Supreme Court Justice Ian Winder was the latest snag in the nearly completed project, which is considered vital for the Caribbean country's fragile economy. Baha Mar said in a statement it was disappointed by the ruling.

Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie plans to take control of an unfinished $3.5 billion mega resort, currently tied up in a corporate bankruptcy process, and push it through to completion to help bolster his country's fragile economy, Reuters reported. Christie, in a speech Thursday night, called for liquidators to take control of the Baha Mar resort and casino project. A fully operational resort would employ about 5,000 people and boost the Bahamas' gross domestic product by more than 10 percent.