Canada

TLC Vision Corp. has agreed to sell its six laser eye centres in Canada as part of a pre-arranged creditor protection filing on Monday that will see the eye-care company emerge as a private entity, the Financial Post reported. The centres, currently known as TLC Laser Eye Centres, will operate under the TLC Canada banner once the sale to a group of Canadian investors is completed, a spokesperson for TLC said. No details on the sale price have been released.

A U.S. bankruptcy-court judge postponed his ruling Wednesday on an application seeking to make the controversial Canadian restructuring plan for C$32 billion in toxic asset-backed commercial paper enforceable in the U.S., Dow Jones reported. Ernst & Young, which was appointed monitor by an Ontario court in March, petitioned the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the southern district of New York to import, in its entirety, the restructuring plan under chapter 15 of the U.S. bankruptcy code. U.S.

GE Energy Financial Services and Vancouver-based Plutonic Power Corporation have paid CAD $52.2 million ($48.9 million) to the financially troubled EarthFirst Canada Inc for the 300-megawatt Dokie Wind Project in British Columbia, CleanTech Brief reported. EarthFirst has been under court-ordered protection from creditors under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. GE and Plutonic have formed a partnership through which they will construct and operate the project’s first 144-megawatt phase which is expected to enter commercial operation by early 2011.

Ciena Corp was cleared to acquire a unit of bankrupt Nortel Networks Inc. for $769 million after fighting off a legal challenge by Nokia Siemens Networks, Reuters reported. Network equipment maker Ciena trumped an offer by Nokia Siemens and its financial partner, One Equity Partners, with an auction-winning bid of $530 million in cash and $239 million in convertible securities for Nortel's optical networking and carrier Ethernet business.

The battle over Nortel Network's optical network division may not be over, The Ottawa Citizen reported. Nokia Siemens Networks said in a U.S. bankruptcy court filing Tuesday that it, not Ciena Corp., was the top bidder in the auction that ended a week ago. It is also ready to increase its offer to $810 million U.S. in cash, or $41 million more than the Ciena cash-and-debt offer that won the fight. The question now is how U.S. and Canadian courts handle the latest twist in the complicated business of selling off Nortel assets.

W.C. Wood Corp., which owned a freezer factory in Ottawa, announced it couldn't find a buyer in time to avoid liquidating the entire company, Industrial Laser Solutions reported. A Canadian court placed the company in receivership, leaving the Ottawa plant's remaining 150 employees without a job. The company had been looking for a buyer since filing a Companies Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada in May. It received Chapter 15 protection in the United States in June.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner clashed over potential taxes on bank transactions at a weekend meeting here of finance policy makers from the Group of 20 leading economies, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K.'s Mr. Brown surprised many attendees by throwing his weight behind the idea of levying a tax on financial transactions and using those funds to pay for future bank bailouts. Germany and France reaffirmed their support for such a tax. Mr. Geithner made plain that the U.S. wouldn't support a bank-transaction tax.

A legal fight between U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs and insolvent Canwest Global Communications Corp. is brewing after Goldman filed court documents suggesting creditors of the media conglomerate have been making moves without telling them, The Canadian Press reported. The allegations centre around a numbered company created by Canwest at the request of Goldman to hold the specialty TV assets the Winnipeg-based company bought from Alliance Atlantis in 2007.

An Ontario judge has approved a proposal by CanWest Global Communications Corp. to shift its flagship National Post newspaper to a subsidiary that contains the company's other newsprint assets, such as the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail reported. In court documents filed this week, CanWest said it would have to close the newspaper if the asset shuffle weren't allowed since creditors at the parent company, which owns Global Television, didn't want to cover further financial losses at the paper.

Canwest Global Communications will tell an Ontario court Friday that it will be forced to shut down the National Post, which has lost $62 million in the last four years, if the newspaper isn't shifted into a company that holds its other dailies, The Canadian Press reported. A hearing is scheduled for the matter on Friday afternoon at the Ontario Superior Court, only hours ahead of a deadline the restructuring media giant suggests could determine the fate of its biggest newspaper by circulation.