Canada

Jaguar Financial Corp. is opposing a proposed $192-million takeover of base metals company Canadian Royalties Inc. by Jien Canada Mining Ltd., saying it's unfair to debtholders, The Canadian Press reported. Canadian Royalties, a Quebec-based company that's developing the Nunavik nickel project, announced last week it has a friendly deal to be acquired by Jien. Jien is offering 80 cents per share for 102 million common shares of Canadian Royalties and $800 per $1,000 principal amount of debentures issued by the Val-d'Or-headquartered company.

Canadian provinces, seeking more than C$80 billion ($76 billion) from tobacco companies for treatment of smoking-related illnesses, are attempting to improperly use the bankruptcy process to force Japan Tobacco Inc.’s JTI-MacDonald unit to settle, a company lawyer said. JTI-MacDonald, the maker of Export A cigarettes in Canada, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004, after a Quebec judge ordered the company to pay C$1.4 billion that the province claims it lost in taxes when tobacco companies exported cigarettes to the U.S.

The CEO of Fraser Papers Inc. says the company's best bet to move forward as a money-making entity is a restructuring that would involve the creation of a separate company to oversee the firm's specialty paper business in Edmundston and in Madawaska, Maine, the New Brunswick Business Journal reported on a Telegraph-Journal story. In an affidavit filed Monday in an Ontario court, Peter Gordon says the company faces many challenges in its quest to emerge from creditor protection.

In the year-long economic slump that is the most severe Canada has experienced since the early 1990s, 357,000 people have lost their jobs – in every sector of the economy, and at every level of the work force, The Globe and Mail reported. But the meltdown has also had a devastating impact on a group that does not show up in the monthly unemployment statistics: the retired. Already hobbled by an aging work force and companies’ gradual move away from guarantees for retired workers, Canada’s pension system has been pushed to the breaking point by the downturn.

Former employees of Nortel Networks Inc. pressed MPs on Thursday to change federal bankruptcy legislation to provide more protection for pensioners and laid-off workers of insolvent companies, the Canwest News Service reported. After filing in January in Canada and the U.S. for court protection from creditors, Nortel said it would not pay severance to some laid-off employees and would trim pension benefits.

Lakeside Steel Inc. is interested in acquiring some or all of the assets of Barzel Industries Inc. through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, Ontario’s Welland Tribune reported. On Sept. 15, Barzel and its U.S. subsidiaries voluntarily petitioned for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code and its Canadian subsidiaries filed an application in Canada seeking protection under the provisions of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act.

Nortel Networks Corp. said Monday that it intends to auction off some of the company's carrier networks business assets in bankruptcy court, The Associated Press reported. Nortel said the auction will be for its next-generation packet core network components, which include software that helps transfer data over wireless networks, related non-patent intellectual property and equipment. Nortel also anticipates granting the buyer a non-exclusive license of relevant patent intellectual property.

The president of a leading European business group has condemned Germany's plan to sweeten the sale of Opel, General Motors' European arm, to a Canadian-led consortium with an offer of billions of euros in subsidies, the Financial Times reported. "We would have been much better off if we had had a structured insolvency. That would have left Opel in Europe in a much stronger position," said Jürgen Thumann, head of BusinessEurope, a pan-European employers' federation.

Canada has decided against launching a review of the $1.13 billion sale of the wireless assets of bankrupt Nortel Networks to Sweden's Ericsson, Industry Minister Tony Clement said on Wednesday. "I am satisfied that the assets sold fall well below the threshold required for a review under the Investment Canada Act," Clement said at a press conference in Toronto, Reuters reported.

Canada's auto warranty program designed to help out the troubled North American car industry ended today and it didn't cost taxpayers a dime, Industry Minister Tony Clement says. "It was never activated because it was conditional upon either Chrysler or GM going into (bankruptcy protection) in Canada and neither of them happened," Clement told the Toronto Star.