National Bank of Canada said on Thursday it will cut 600 jobs as part of a restructuring and take a charge of C$175 million ($131 million) in the fourth quarter. Canada's sixth biggest lender said the charge included severance payments to employees and the cost of changing premises. The restructuring will bring C$120 million in annual savings. The bank said that at the same time it is looking to fill over 500 positions, primarily in sales, service and IT functions and expects to increase the proportion of its staff in "knowledge-intensive" sectors over the coming years.

Former telecommunications equipment giant Nortel Networks Ltd reached an agreement on Wednesday to divvy up the $7.3 billion raised from liquidating the failed company, clearing the way for pensioners and bondholders to get paid after a seven-year wait, Reuters reported. The agreement provides 24 percent or $1.8 billion of the cash for Nortel's former U.S. business. Nortel estates in Canada and Europe will receive 57 percent and 18 percent each, the former company said in a court filing.

Canada took a series of steps aimed at cooling housing markets in the country’s biggest cities, including addressing concerns about foreign investors’ influence in driving up home prices to frothy levels, The Wall Street Journal reported. The moves follows months of mounting worries about how foreign cash has contributed to soaring house prices in Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia, and highlight the dilemma facing policy makers looking to balance prolonged rock-bottom interest rates with outsize housing-related debt.

General Motors of Canada Co. has pledged to eliminate the $2.6-billion deficit in the pension plans for its unionized workers and retirees as part of a new contract negotiated between the company and Unifor, The Globe and Mail reported yesterday. The automaker’s 29,000 retirees in Canada were worried about the future of the plans as Unifor and GM went into contract negotiations earlier this month, fearing that the assembly plant in Oshawa, Ont., would be closed, the company would wind up the plans and they would take a hit of about 25 percent on their pensions.

After more than two years in court-supervised bankruptcy protection, private equity investment firm called Bedrock Industries Group —a fund that buys distressed companies and restructures them —moved into prime position to buy U.S. Steel Canada, CBC.ca reported. A memordandum of understanding with the province was announced Wednesday, but there are many things that would still have to be negotiated first- and many other players in those negotiations.

Foreign investors dropped out of Vancouver’s property market last month after the provincial government imposed a 15 percent surcharge to stem a surge in home prices, Bloomberg News reported. Overseas buyers accounted for less than 1 percent of the C$6.5 billion ($5 billion) of residential real estate purchases between Aug. 2 to 31 in Metro Vancouver, according to data released by British Columbia’s Ministry of Finance on Thursday. In the roughly seven weeks prior to that, they’d represented 17 percent of transactions by value.

Lost in last week’s news of more Canadian megamergers, Calgary’s Tervita Corp. unveiled a major restructuring that capped off the company’s near decade-long march toward a broken balance sheet, The Globe and Mail reported. As part of the complicated arrangement, the energy services and waste management company will swap its current debt for equity, with secured debt holders getting preferred shares and unsecured debt holders receiving common shares.

Tervita Corp., the Canadian oilfield services company focused on waste management, is planning a debt-for-equity swap to reduce its total leverage by about C$2 billion ($1.5 billion), Bloomberg News reported. Holders of 63 percent of its senior unsecured notes and 90 percent of its subordinated unsecured notes have agreed to the proposal, according to a statement on Wednesday from the closely-held company. Tervita also has secured agreement from 69 percent of its shareholders, the Calgary-based company said.

Lightstream Resources increased 2015 cash bonuses for three executives months before the Canadian oil producer proposed a debt-for-equity swap to stay afloat as its stock was down to pennies, the Chicago Tribune reported. Chief Financial Officer Peter Scott and Chief Operating Officer Rene LaPrade saw their non-equity compensation for last year, paid in December, increase about 11 percent from 2014 to C$200,000 ($153,000) each, according to a filing from the Calgary-based company on Friday. The bonus for Peter Hawkes, vice-president for geosciences, surged 32 percent to C$119,763.

Debt and equity investors in Canada's largest newspaper publisher have approved a restructuring plan that will give creditors nearly all of its equity and slash its debt obligations, Postmedia Network Canada Corp said on Wednesday. Postmedia, which owns the National Post, Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen and Sun tabloids in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Winnipeg, said that 99.9 percent of shareholder votes cast were in favor while two separate tiers of debtholders cast 100 percent of their votes in favor.