The oil industry in Canada's resource-rich Alberta will be on the hook for a C$235 million ($172.7 million) government loan to clean up a rising number of oil wells abandoned by owners who have gone bankrupt, the province said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The loan, repayable over 10 years, will go to the government-run, industry-funded Orphan Well Association (OWA), which cleans up wells for which no party is legally responsible, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said at a news conference.

Moody’s downgrade of Canada’s biggest banks beat down assets in a market already rattled by woes of mortgage lender Home Capital Group Inc, Bloomberg News reported. Yet analysts say this isn’t evidence of an impending crisis. “The weatherman just warned us about a storm that already came and went,” said Derek Holt, head of capital markets economics at Scotiabank.

When President Enrique Peña Nieto called Donald Trump and persuaded him not to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement on his 100th day in office, it was a reminder that Mexico has not lost its touch in managing international crises. Debt default, devaluation, hyperinflation and bank nationalisations — Mexico has coped with them all in the past four decades, the Financial Times reported. As Mr Trump was building his business empire, officials in Latin America’s second-biggest economy were cutting their teeth on catastrophe.

Canada's Hudson's Bay Co has hired a debt restructuring adviser to review potential options for combining its business with debt-laden U.S. department store operator Neiman Marcus Group, according to people familiar with the matter. The move is the clearest indication yet that Neiman Marcus' $4.7 billion debt pile poses significant challenges to a merger between Hudson's Bay, owner of the Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue retail chains, and private equity-owned Neiman Marcus, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story.

The world is suddenly paying attention to Home Capital Group Inc., the tiny Canadian mortgage lender that’s on the ropes. The stock is plunging, it faces a run on deposits and regulators are probing management’s disclosure of fraudulent mortgages, Bloomberg News reported. Its troubles are raising questions: Is this an isolated case of a struggling mortgage company, or early signs of cracks forming in Canada’s red-hot housing market? It started in 2014 when the company, formed 31 years ago by Gerald Soloway, failed to screen a pile of questionable mortgages brought in by outside brokers.

A Canadian court on Monday upheld a decision to grant lenders priority over environmental clean-up costs in oil-and-gas bankruptcies, raising chances disused wells from defunct companies could become a government responsibility, Reuters reported. That could further strain the government-run, industry-funded Orphan Well Association (OWA), which cleans up wells for which no party is legally responsible. The group has said it needs extra funding and upping levies for producers is an option.

Ratings agency S&P has downgraded El Salvador’s sovereign credit rating to “selective default” after the government missed payments related to its pension debts, the Financial Times reported. The government missed $28.8m worth of payments due between April 7 and April 10 after the country’s Congress failed to approve a budgetary allocation to cover the payments. Assuming a solution is not found, the total owed is set to rise to $55.2m by the end of this month.

An Ontario appeal court has rejected an attempt by United Steelworkers Local 2724 to overturn two orders made by Justice Frank Newbould in the Essar Steel Algoma restructuring proceedings, Sootoday.com reported. Local 2724, representing Essar Algoma's salaried employees, was trying to appeal decisions made by Judge Newbould on Dec. 22 and 29, 2016. On Dec. 22, Newbould had ordered that a term sheet summarizing the terms and conditions of an agreement between Essar Algoma and Cliffs Mining Co. be disclosed to the union's financial advisor, subject to a non-disclosure agreement. On Dec.

The Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation (PACICC) will participate in the federal government’s review of financial sector regulations next year, including the examination of an act that has not “really been reviewed” in more than a century, the Canadian Underwriter reported.

The Bahamas resort Baha Mar has taken more than 10 years to open, but on Friday, the $4.2 billion, 1,000-acre development on a half-mile of beachfront in Nassau is expected to finally debut — at least, in part, the International New York Times reported. Baha Mar comprises three hotel brands — Grand Hyatt, SLS Hotels and Rosewood Hotels & Resorts — for a total of 2,300 rooms. Grand Hyatt, with 1,800 rooms, is the largest and will be previewing on opening day; with nightly rates in the mid-$300 range, it’s also the most affordable.