Canada

American Company Bedrock Industries Group has reached a deal to buy beleaguered U.S. Steel Canada, U.S. Steel announced today, CBC.ca reported. The sale is subject to court approvals.

Canada Finance Minister Bill Morneau pledged Tuesday to spend additional billions of dollars in infrastructure for the remainder of this decade and beyond as the Liberal government presses ahead with fiscal policy to lift moribund growth, The Wall Street Journal reported. The finance minister issued the details in the government’s fall economic update. The expenditures are necessary to mitigate the fallout from a slow-growth global environment and the hit to Canadian incomes from the commodity-price swoon, he said.

Performance Sports Group Ltd , the maker of Bauer ice hockey gear, said on Monday it has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States and Canada to facilitate a restructuring and sale of almost all of its assets. The company listed assets in the range of $500 million-$1 billion and liabilities of $500 million-$1 billion in its voluntary petition under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the District of Delaware.

Renewable energy giant SunEdison Inc. has placed its Canadian arm into bankruptcy while the parent company seeks more time under court protection in the U.S. to sell off assets and work out a strategy for repaying billions of dollars in debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company’s Canadian division, which also designs and develops renewable energy projects, says it can no longer fund its operations. It sought protection Thursday from both creditors and lawsuits under Canada’s Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, or CCAA, the equivalent of chapter 11 in the U.S.

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.