When a runaway Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway train hauling 72 tankers of Bakken crude oil derailed and exploded in the majestic town of Lac Megantic, Que., killing 47 people and destroying more than 40 buildings on July 6, 2013, it set in motion what is expected to be one of the most compelling and complex cross-border insolvencies ever tackled by Canadian and U.S. courts, Canadian Lawyer reported in a commentary.

While the overall risk to Canada’s financial system has declined for the first time in two years, closer to home the Bank of Canada continues to be concerned about household debt and housing, The Wall Street Journal Real Time Canada blog reported.

Homburg Invest Inc. is suing several companies chaired by Richard Homburg, its former chairman, for $2,895,000, The Chronicle Herald reported. According to court documents, Homburg Invest is undergoing insolvency restructuring under the protection of the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, with proceedings in the Superior Court of Quebec. As part of that restructuring, the plaintiff divested certain U.S. assets, with limited assistance from Homburg Realty Service, whose parent, according to court documents, is Homburg Canada, now Citadel Holdings.

The court-appointed monitor for struggling Canadian wireless startup Mobilicity has extended the deadline for suitors to bid for the company by a week to Dec. 16, a regulatory filing shows, Reuters reported. Bidders for the Toronto-based startup, which filed for court protection from its creditors earlier this year, now have until noon next Monday to submit their offers in the court-supervised auction, according to a document posted on the website of monitor Ernst & Young Inc. Ernst & Young said it extended the deadline following requests from several bidders.

The fight over defunct Nortel Networks' $7.5 billion in cash will be decided in joint U.S.-Canadian court hearings and not in arbitration, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia upheld a bankruptcy court ruling in March that there was never an agreement to use arbitration to divide the pile of cash among various Nortel estates around the world. Nortel sought protection from creditors in courts around the world in 2009 and its businesses were quickly sold, reducing a once-global corporate giant to little more than a pile of cash.

Actions towards parliamentary passage of an Insolvency Act are proceeding as planned as part of the growth-enhancing structural reforms being established to improve the business environment in Jamaica, according to the October 2013 report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The Gleaner reported. The Government has agreed that improvement to the insolvency framework is one of the pieces of legislation it expects to finalise before the end of the year.

Pensioners in developed economies are no longer being spared the worst effects of the financial crisis as fiscal austerity programmes aimed at curtailing spending on the elderly start to kick in, the OECD has warned, the Financial Times reported. Spending on pensions, which accounts for nearly a fifth of government outlays on average across the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is being limited through a variety of benefit changes including raising state retirement ages and freezing – or even cutting – payouts.

Fees paid to lawyers and other professionals working on the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings of Nortel Networks Corp. have passed the $1 billion US mark. That's outraged former Nortel employees who saw their long-term disability benefits cut after the company went under, CBC.ca reported. Ernst & Young, the firm hired by the Ontario Superior Court to be the Canadian Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) monitor is already projecting another $47 million US of professional fees from this past October until February 1, 2014.

The OECD, the international body that ranked Canada’s housing market as among the world’s frothiest, warned today of the threat of a “disorderly correction” in prices given the record debt burden among Canadian families, The Globe and Mail reported. In its semi-annual economic outlook, the 34-country group said the market will probably weaken “since the housing stock seems greater than underlying demand,” but that the federal government may be forced to intervene again should price pressures emerge.

Finding a new partner to develop the $1-billion Capital City Centre, selling off a handful of properties and drastically cutting back operations are all part of a plan to pull the League group of companies out of creditor protection as a going concern, the Times Colonist reported. That was the game plan expected to be unveiled in court in Vancouver today as the League group petitioned to extend the protection it has been granted under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act and extend the debtor-in-possession financing it requires to run day-to-day operations.