Sears Canada on Wednesday won court approval to extend credit protection by a month to Nov. 7, but its creditors set a deadline of this week to liquidate the retailers’ assets, leaving the company with mere days to decide its fate, Reuters reported. While the extension of creditor protection will keep its lenders at bay a bit longer, the new liquidation deadline means a deal with Executive Chairman Brandon Stranzl that would allow it to remain in business would still need to be reached by Saturday, Oct. 7.

Has billionaire Murray Edwards stepped in to prop up a troubled Canadian copper miner once more? That’s what investors and analysts are wondering after Imperial Metals Corp. won a second reprieve on its loans until Oct. 13 while bankers review a new financial rescue plan. Edwards, the company’s largest shareholder who has been involved since 1994, has previously helped bail out Imperial Metals by injecting capital, making a loan and guaranteeing a credit line, Bloomberg News reported.

Sears Canada Inc said late on Friday that it has asked a court to extend creditor protection that expires on Wednesday by another month so it can finish negotiating a deal that would keep the iconic brand running in Canada, Reuters reported. The company, which in 2012 was spun off from U.S. retailer Sears Holdings Corp, filed for creditor protection in June and laid out a restructuring plan that included cutting 2,900 jobs and closing roughly a quarter of its stores.

Canadian steel producer Stelco Holdings Inc, which emerged from bankruptcy protection three months ago, said on Wednesday it has filed a preliminary prospectus with securities regulators in Canada for a proposed initial public offering of its shares, Reuters reported. Stelco, which is owned by U.S. restructuring firm Bedrock Industries Group LLC, is seeking to raise US$150 million in the share sale and could have a market value of about US$1 billion, according to a source familiar with the situation.

It’s crunch time for Concordia International Corp. With the junk-rated Canadian drug-maker facing two October interest payments, pressure is building for it to reach a debt-restructuring agreement with key bondholders. S&P Global Ratings downgraded Concordia on Sept. 18, citing its "unsustainable" capital structure and forecasting a “highly probable” likelihood of a restructuring or distressed exchange, Bloomberg News reported.

Struggling retailer Sears Canada Inc’s top executive is negotiating a private-equity backed deal that could be valued at more than C$650 million ($533 million), citing people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported on a Wall Street Journal story. The retailer’s Executive Chairman Brandon Stranzl last month stepped away from day-to-day operations to focus on plans for the company, which filed for creditor protection in June.

Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. is prepared to inject as much as 5 billion rand ($386 million) to pay off bank debt owed by AfriSam Group Pty Ltd. and help South Africa’s second-biggest cement producer clinch a tie-up with larger rival PPC Ltd., according to two people familiar with the matter. The money from the African unit of the Canadian insurer will be used to repay bank loans and allow AfriSam to push through a new offer to PPC, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private, Bloomberg News reported.

Sears Canada Inc.’s top executive is preparing an offer to save the bankrupt company from liquidation, The Wall Street Journal reported. Executive Chairman Brandon Stranzl intends to submit an offer for Sears Canada that would preserve the company as a going concern, according to a Wednesday memorandum filed in its insolvency proceedings. The retailer filed for protection from creditors in June under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, Canada’s equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy.

At least four individuals have filed whistleblower complaints with Canadian securities regulators alleging fraud at a multibillion-dollar investment firm and its publicly traded lending arm, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Catalyst Capital Group Inc., one of Canada’s largest private-equity firms, is accused in the complaints of artificially inflating the value of some of its assets and deceiving borrowers about the terms of loans it made, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A battle over whether energy-company creditors should help pay for cleaning up thousands of abandoned oil wells in Canada may be heading to the country’s Supreme Court, Bloomberg News reported. At the center of the dispute is Redwater Energy Corp., a small publicly traded oil producer in Alberta that filed for bankruptcy in late 2015. The receiver that’s liquidating the company argues it should be able to sell its best wells and leave the worst behind for an energy industry-funded group to clean up.