North America

Two meetings of groups of creditors of indebted Ocho Rios attraction Mystic Mountain Limited, MML, held during the past week, have failed to resolve issues related to whether the beleaguered company will be declared bankrupt and its assets sold off to repay bondholders and other persons and institutions it owes money, the Jamaican Gleaner reported. Unresolved, too, is whether MML's changing payment proposal to settle its debt will be accepted by the creditors. Likewise, the status of the trustee the company chose to oversee that process is still not settled.

Mexico is considering using its share of recently-approved International Monetary Fund reserves, worth about $12 billion, to repay the country’s debts, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said, Bloomberg News reported. Although the funds add to the central bank reserves, Mexico has enough bandwidth to use them to pay down debt, Lopez Obrador said at a daily press conference Wednesday. “The reserves have grown a lot and they pay very little interest,” he said.

Qatar National Bank QPSC, the Middle East’s biggest lender, asked a U.S. court to order Eritrea to pay nearly $300 million of debt after the Horn of Africa nation refused to participate in two lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported. The Doha-based bank requested a judgment by default from a federal court in Washington on Friday after Eritrea failed to respond to the bank’s claim seeking to enforce a U.K. ruling in 2019. QNB alleges that President Isaias Afwerki’s government went to drastic lengths to avoid being served with key documents.

Bayer lost a third appeal against U.S. court verdicts that awarded damages to customers blaming their cancers on use of its glyphosate-based weedkillers, leaving the German drugs and pesticides group to pin hopes for legal relief on the U.S. Supreme Court, Reuters reported. A California appeals court yesterday upheld an $86 million verdict that found Bayer responsible for a couple's cancer after using Bayer's glyphosate-based Roundup against weeds.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. made a new, higher bid for Kansas City Southern, looking to derail the U.S. railroad’s pending merger with rival Canadian National Railway Co. ahead of an important shareholder vote less than two weeks away, Bloomberg News reported. The offer is $300 a share, Canadian Pacific said in a statement Tuesday, or about $27 billion in equity value. While that’s higher than its original $25 billion bid from March, the new price doesn’t match the $30 billion deal that Kansas City Southern’s board accepted from Canadian National in May.

Talks under a mediator’s watch continued late Thursday between Canada and the union representing its border agents to head off a labor action starting Friday that threatens the flow of U.S.-Canada trade and a plan to allow American tourists to visit for the first time in 16 months, the Wall Street Journal reported. The two sides agreed to work with a mediator ahead of a 6 a.m. Eastern time Friday deadline set by the union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

Bankrupt units of a Mexican and Colombian payroll lender have secured court approval to access part of a $45 million loan to fund operations during their chapter 11 case after agreeing to install a chief restructuring officer, Reuters reported. During a virtual hearing on Wednesday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kate Stickles in Wilmington, Del., signed off on Alpha Latam Management LLC's request to tap $17.5 million of the full loan. A hearing on the rest of the loan will be held at a later date. ALM is an affiliate of Mexico’s Alpha Holding SA de CV, which is not part of the chapter 11 case.

Creditors of indebted Ocho Rios attraction Mystic Mountain are scheduled to meet today in a bid to change the trustee in bankruptcy named last month by Mystic Mountain Limited, MML, as part of a proposal to settle nearly US$14 million, or approximately $2.1 billion in debt, should the company be declared bankrupt, the Jamaica Gleaner reported.

Container shipping rates from China to the United States have scaled fresh highs above $20,000 per 40-foot box as rising retailer orders ahead of the peak U.S. shopping season add strain to global supply chains, Reuters reported. The acceleration in Delta-variant COVID-19 outbreaks in several counties has slowed global container turnaround rates. Typhoons off China's busy southern coast in late July and this week have also contributed to the crisis gripping the world's most important method for moving everything from gym equipment and furniture to car parts and electronics.