Businesses avoid paying $200 billion annually in taxes by channeling their overseas’ investments through offshore financial hubs, a United Nations agency said Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. The estimate by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development is one of the first attempts by an international governmental organization to put a figure on tax avoidance by companies that record their profits in countries with low tax rates, regardless of where those profits are actually earned.

A Mexican judge said on Monday he had approved the debt restructing plan for Mexican homebuilder Geo, which entered into bankruptcy protection in April 2014, Reuters reported. The judge said bankruptcy protection for Geo and four of its units was over, according to a court statement. A ruling has not yet been issued for Geo's 11 other subsidiaries. The company's shares have been suspended since 2013 because it was not reporting financial statements.

Alberta's online university is facing a financial crisis, but the president is reassuring students that the institution will not be closing down, CBC News reported. According to an internal report, Athabasca University (AU) will be insolvent in two years. The report was prepared by a task force struck by Peter MacKinnon, the interim president of the university. Enrolment demographics are behind the university's troubles, MacKinnon said. Provincial funding has dropped from covering 80 per cent of operating expenses at Athabasca to closer to 30 per cent. The rest comes from student tuition.

The number of Canadians who can’t pay their debts and are being forced into insolvency is on the rise for the first time since the recession, according to a report by CIBC, The Canadian Press reported. The bank says the cumulative number of insolvencies rose by 1.2 per cent in the six-month period ended in February. The overall increase came as personal bankruptcies fell by 4.7 per cent. However the number of proposals, where consumers negotiate to repay only a portion of their debt, rose by no less than nine per cent.

Proposed new obligations on multinationals to produce country-by-country reports on their financial affairs will have a “massive impact” on them, a leading member of the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation has said, the Irish Times reported. Pascal Saint-Amans, director of the Center for Tax Policy and Administration at the OECD, was reacting to what he said were “angry responses” to the organisation’s latest proposals on the topic.

The disclosure that some of the world’s largest banks had been used as a conduit for bribes allegedly paid to soccer officials has prompted the banks to scrutinize their ties with FIFA, and could make it more difficult for the sport’s powerful governing body to move money around the world, The Globe and Mail reported. Major U.S. and European banks say they are stepping up scrutiny of FIFA-related accounts, and are wary in particular of ties to two regional member organizations that feature prominently in the U.S. Department of Justice’s indictment. U.S.

Two weeks after announcing it will shut down its money-losing oilsands project, insolvent Southern Pacific Resource Corp. said its first-lien creditors have filed to throw it into receivership, The Calgary Herald reported. “The effect of a receivership will make any recovery for unsecured creditors or shareholders very unlikely,” the Calgary-based junior producer warned in a brief news release issued Thursday afternoon.

The liquidators of a pair of failed Cayman Islands-based hedge funds run by a former Harvard quarterback are suing Barclays PLC to claw back some $80 million they say was illegally funneled to the bank to cover margin calls, The Wall Street Journal reported. The offshore funds--ICP Strategic Credit Income Fund Ltd. and ICP Strategic Credit Income Master Fund Ltd. -- were so-called feeder funds managed by ICP Asset Management LLC, a money-management firm founded by Thomas C. Priore. Lawyers for the liquidators said in a suit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York that Mr.

The deal between the Canadian government and U.S. Steel that allowed the steelmaker to renege on its obligation to make steel in Canada — at plants in Hamilton and Nanticoke in Ontario — will remain a secret, CBC.ca reported. An Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that while it is reasonable that the deal be open, for fairness in the bankruptcy protection process, he dismissed an unsealing motion, saying he didn't have the authority to make that happen.

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc said on Wednesday it was seeking court protection from creditors of its Wabush iron ore mine and related assets in Eastern Canada, four months after it sought similar protection for its other Canadian iron ore assets. The U.S.-based iron ore and coal miner said it had concluded that a "more comprehensive restructuring and sale process" would result if it was able to include the Wabush group under the same creditor protection it obtained in January for its larger Bloom Lake iron ore assets in Quebec Superior Court.