Canada

Royal Bank of Canada is withdrawing from a lawsuit against MBIA Inc. over the insurer’s restructuring in 2009, the third bank this week to drop out, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Royal Bank of Canada joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Barclays Plc in withdrawing from the case, according to a filing today in New York State Supreme Court. The discontinuance orders for Barclays and JPMorgan were filed Dec. 29, according to court papers.

Canada is poised to cut its corporate-tax rate to 16.5 percent on Jan. 1, part of a decade-long campaign that some experts say is making the country one of the most cost-effective places to do business, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Canada's government says that the cuts and other business-attracting measures should bring more investment to the country.

Several Canadian banks are taking advantage of their solid balance sheets as well as the current revamping and consolidation of the American banking system to again look south for expansion, the New York Times reported today. Last week, the Toronto-Dominion Bank agreed to pay $6.3 billion for Chrysler Financial. Bank of Montreal earlier this month bought Marshall & Ilsley, a bank based in Milwaukee, for $4.1 billion.

AbitibiBowater Inc. has set its sights on renewed growth after emerging from creditor protection with a revamped balance sheet and about $6 billion less debt than when it declared bankruptcy about 19 months ago, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. "I think it's a very exciting new chapter in the company's history after several years of fighting a declining market and a pretty drastic recession," Dick Evans, the Montreal company's chairman, said in an interview.

AbitibiBowater, the large newsprint maker formed through a merger three years ago, announced it had emerged from bankruptcy protection on Thursday, the International Herald Tribune reported. Debt and declining newsprint demand in North America led the company to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware, as well as similar protection under Canadian receivership laws, in April 2009. The restructuring cut the $8.78 billion in debt to just over $1 billion, mainly by having creditors exchange their claims for equity.

Famed-but-failed Calgary chocolatier Bernard Callebaut, the man, is attempting to rebuild his once-proud empire with a new sweets company starting this week. His chief competitor is Bernard Callebaut, the company he founded 27 years ago, The Canadian Press reported. His stores, his recipes and the rights to his name are no longer his he went into receivership earlier this year. He will rely on his skills, pedigree and reputation to craft a new run. The company went into receivership in August. Callebaut made a bid to buy the business back from the receiver, but on Oct.

An ocean of red ink has sunk a company that owns several wineries, vineyards and orchards in the south Okanagan, Global Saskatoon reported. The Lang, Soaring Eagle and Stonehill Estate wineries in Naramata, all owned by Holman Lang Vineyards, are now in receivership and are for sale. The company expanded rapidly during the wine industry boom from 2000 to 2007 and was struggling under a crushing $15 million bank debt. A Vancouver accounting firm has been appointed to sell the properties and estimates the company’s assets at approximately $23 million.

Canada’s $4-billion infrastructure stimulus program was launched with a single focus in mind: jobs. Now, after surveying those who actually received the federal cash, Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page gives the program poor marks on that goal, The Globe and Mail reported. The survey reinvigorates an unresolved debate that has long pitted the free-market disciples of classic liberal economic thinking against the post-Great Depression view popularized by British economist John Maynard Keynes that government intervention and deficits in hard times work.

Nortel Networks Corp, the fallen Canadian telecom giant, said it will sell nearly all assets of its Chinese joint venture to Ericsson's China unit for $50 million in cash, Reuters reported. The joint venture -- Guangdong Nortel Telecommunication Equipment -- is a research, development and manufacturing firm in which Nortel's units, Nortel Networks Ltd and Nortel China, own 62 percent. GDNT became a supplier to Ericsson after the Swedish mobile network equipment maker bought Nortel's CDMA and GSM businesses.

A committee of Canada's Senate on Thursday killed a proposed law aimed at preventing long-term disabled workers from being treated as unsecured creditors in bankruptcy proceedings, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Bill S-216, as it is known, which moves the disabled up the queue to preferred creditor status, is meant to help disabled Nortel Networks Corp. employees who will lose their benefits at year's end because of a court-approved former employees' settlement earlier this year.