Canada

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.

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 worst may not be over for everyone in Canada’s oil patch even as crude prices show signs of stability, Bloomberg News reported. While producers are on firmer footing, oilfield service companies are still keeping restructuring advisers and lawyers busy as the effects of nearly three years of depressed oil prices continue to roll through one of Canada’s most important industries.

The Nova Scotia Supreme Court has granted a La Havre company an extension for filing its proposal for bankruptcy — with conditions. Kocken Energy Systems Inc. was given the full 45 days to file its proposal, the maximum allowed under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, The Chronicle Herald reported. Kocken manufactures process equipment for the oil and gas industry. In 2011, the two shareholders, William Famulak and Arthur Sager, moved manufacturing from Alberta to La Have. In 2015, Kocken acquired a plant at St. Antoine, N.B.

A Canadian court has placed the privately held Lexin Resources Ltd oil company in receivership to sell off its assets after an unprecedented application by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER), the agency said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The AER's statement came weeks after the agency suspended licenses on all of the company's facilities. The AER has said Lexin had failed to comply with multiple orders, lacked enough staff to manage its more than 1,600 sites and owed more than C$70 million ($52.43 million). Lexin could not be reached for comment.

Canada’s financial industry is urging the federal government to consider alternatives to proposals that could require them to take on a greater share of mortgage defaults through a deductible -- calling it one of the biggest shakeups to hit housing finance in 50 years, Bloomberg News reported. "This submission has questioned whether a deductible is the most effective way to rebalance risks within the housing finance system,” the Canadian Bankers Association said in a report on Tuesday.

Rolling back wages 10 per cent is one of five priorities to ensure Essar Steel Algoma is competitive after its restructuring ends, the company's president and chief executive officer says. The steelmaker, under Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act protection since the fall of 2015, wants its unionized workforce, represented by United Steelworkers of America Locals 2251 and 2724, to accept the wage cut so Essar's payroll is in line with its Canadian competitors, Saultstar reported.

Three years after the shutdown of Wabush Mines by Cliffs Natural Resources, former workers and retirees are looking to a Quebec court to help them recover some of what they lost, CBC News reported. "We're all in this together now," said Rita Pynn, a retiree and member of the Wabush pension committee. "We've got to fight for what we worked for and what we feel Cliffs robbed us of." The workers lost medical benefits when the mine went into creditor protection. The company also left the workers' pension plan underfunded by more than $45 million.