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.

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said Canadians should not underestimate the "historic" restructuring ahead for the economy as it needs to adapt to a reshaped global marketplace in the post-financial crisis era, the Financial Post reported. However, in a TV interview broadcast on Sunday, he said he's confident the country's business community is up to the task, as their balance sheets are in "outstanding shape" and corporate leaders appear to recognize the changes afoot in the global marketplace. Read more.

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.