Lawyers handling a $9 billion class-action lawsuit against Sino-Forest Corp. will ask an Ontario judge on Friday to terminate bankruptcy proceedings involving the troubled timber company, the Toronto Star reported. When Sino-Forest, which is based in Mississauga but operates in China, sought protection from creditors under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act last month, any pending legal actions were essentially put on hold.

A Chinese maker of synthetic fibres that was on the verge of becoming the first company to default in China's bond market said on Monday that it would repay its obligation, bringing short-term relief to worried investors but raising doubts about the longer-term development of the market, Reuters reported. Shandong Helon Co Ltd, an insolvent chemical fibre manufacturer based in eastern China, said on Monday that it will repay its commercial paper on schedule next week.

Sino-Forest, the Chinese forestry company whose stock collapsed after a short-seller's fraud accusations, said on Monday that Canada's top securities regulator found that its conduct ran afoul of sections of securities law pertaining to fraud, Reuters reported. The Ontario Securities Commission made its findings known to Sino-Forest by serving the Toronto-listed company and some of its current and former executives with enforcement notices, the company said in a statement on Monday.

Ernst & Young LLP has resigned as Sino-Forest's auditor, days after a Canadian court granted creditor protection to the embattled Chinese forestry company and months after fraud allegations triggered a stampede out of its stock, Reuters reported. Sino-Forest's Toronto-listed shares tanked last June after a short-seller accused it of exaggerating the size of its forestry assets. The company says the allegations have paralyzed its business.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a national audience on Tuesday that China's state-controlled banks are a "monopoly" that must be broken, in an unusually blunt appeal for a shake-up of the creaky financial system of the world's No. 2 economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mr. Wen's declaration on a national radio program on Tuesday represents an unprecedented 11th-hour push for an overhaul by China's top economic official, who formally came into office in 2003 with a reputation as a reformer but has acknowledged publicly his regrets that he didn't go far enough. Mr.

Richard Chandler, the New Zealand billionaire and biggest shareholder of Sino-Forest, has hired a team to plan a rescue restructuring of the Chinese timber group after it filed for bankruptcy protection last week, the Financial Times reported. Richard Chandler Corporation, his investment vehicle, said on Monday that it had assembled a group including David Walker, an expert in the Asian forestry sector, to lead its proposal for the restructuring of Sino-Forest. “Sino-Forest faces a range of complex problems,” Mr Walker said.

Sino-Forest Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection as part of a plan that may see the Chinese timber grower company sold to bondholders, nine months after it was accused of fraud by short seller Carson Block, Bloomberg reported. The company obtained an initial order for creditor protection in the Ontario Superior Court under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, Sino-Forest said yesterday in a statement.

A new wave of scandals involving Chinese companies listed overseas could hit New York and Hong Kong in the coming weeks as the annual results season get under way with auditors on high alert for fraud, the Financial Times reported. Auditors are under great pressure this year to detect discrepancies in their clients’ results, having faced embarrassment and legal action in 2011 following dozens of accounting scandals at Chinese companies listed in North America.

The economic slowdown weighing on both China and Europe may test Beijing's tolerance for a more flexible currency, thus creating competing policy interests for both regions, Dow Jones reported. Thursday's grim Chinese and euro-zone manufacturing data underscored how synchronized the world's largest economies have become. The 17-nation currency zone is widely expected to see a recession this year, which has bolstered forecasts for a weaker euro. Yet China has, at least for now, become the bigger worry.

The Chinese government has begun making it much easier for foreign investors to put money into China’s stock market and other financial investments, in a slight relaxing of more than a decade of tight capital controls, the International Herald Tribune reported. The move, not publicly announced but disclosed by some private money managers, indicates that Chinese officials are eager to counter a rising flight of capital from the country, a worsening slump in real estate prices, a weak stock market and at least a temporary trade deficit caused by a steep bill for oil imports.