After scratching out a faster recovery than the U.S. and most developed nations, Canada is facing its strongest economic headwinds in years, including falling commodity prices and ballooning personal debt, the Wall Street Journal reported today. While the recession laid global peers low, Canada's strong bank balance sheets funded continued consumer spending during the recovery. Years of that easy credit in turn helped give rise to a housing boom that has underpinned an economy already benefiting from another surge—in commodity prices.

Retailer Controladora Comercial Mexicana SAB said yesterday that it secured a syndicated bank loan for 2.5 billion pesos ($192 million) to pay off the remainder of the debt it restructured in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Comercial Mexicana said in a filing with the Mexican stock exchange that the syndicated loan was led by Citi unit Banamex and JPMorgan and included the participation of three other banks.

Statistics Canada said today that Canada's annual inflation rate remained subdued in October although a touch higher than expectations, as higher prices at gas stations and for meat were offset by a decline in natural gas costs, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The all-items consumer price index in October, on a year-over-year basis, was up 1.2 percent, matching the previous month's rate but slightly above market expectations of 1.1 percent, according to economists at Royal Bank of Canada.

British aero engineer Hampson Industries Plc, which has been struggling with a heavy debt load, on Monday said it planned to appoint administrators, less than four months after it terminated a sale process, Reuters reported. The company, which supplies tools and components to planemakers Airbus and Boeing Co, put itself on the block in February but warned that the sale process was likely to result in little or no value to the company's shareholders.

Centrais Eletricas do Para SA, a Brazilian utility know as Celpa that was acquired this month by Equatorial Energia SA, filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in New York, Bloomberg reported. The company, based in Belem, Brazil, listed both debt and assets of more than $1 billion in documents filed today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Chapter 15 protects foreign companies from U.S. lawsuits and creditor claims while a company reorganizes abroad. Celpa is asking the U.S.

Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank gained court approval on Wednesday for a $125 million bankruptcy loan from Fortress Investment Group, believed to be the first such loan consistent with sharia, Islamic law, Reuters reported. The loan, approved by Judge Sean Lane in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, New York, will fund Arcapita as it tries to restructure debt after filing for bankruptcy in March. Wednesday's hearing was delayed two hours as Arcapita, its creditors and Fortress negotiated over the price of the deal, Dennis Dunne, a lawyer for Arcapita's creditors' committee, told the judge.

Micron Technology's plan to acquire Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida took a big step toward completion after a Tokyo court approved the agreement and dismissed a rival plan promoted by a group of bondholders, Reuters reported. A district court in Tokyo said on Wednesday it was referring bankrupt Elpida's plan to be bought by U.S. chipmaker Micron to creditors for approval, according to a news release on Elpida's website.

An unexpected New York court decision has raised the spectre of an Argentine government default, causing a rise in the cost of insuring against a payment failure and rattling the country’s bond market, the Financial Times reported. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in New York late last week ruled that Argentina was legally barred from prioritising payments to bondholders that participated in debt exchanges in 2005 and 2010.

The world's biggest banks are drawing up tactics to strengthen their hand in future sovereign debt restructurings, as they seek to avoid another situation similar to the Greek debt talks, when government pushed them into accepting to tens of billions of euros in writedowns, Reuters reported on an International Financing Review story.

A U.S. judge told Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc he was "troubled" by the firm's inadequate efforts to keep creditors informed about its bankruptcy process, and warned he may upend its proposed sale to U.S. rival Micron Technology Inc. Elpida's main bankruptcy proceeding is being handled by a district court in Tokyo, but Christopher Sontchi, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court judge overseeing Elpida's parallel U.S. case, said the company was taking a risk by not keeping creditors better informed.