Argentina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower-court ruling against it in a case over the nation’s defaulted debt, Bloomberg reported. The South American nation claims a federal appeals court in New York was wrong when it ruled in October that investors in restructured Argentine debt can’t be paid unless holders of the nation’s defaulted bonds, led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and its NML Capital Ltd. unit, are also paid.

Canada's biggest securities regulator accused Ernst & Young LLP of failing to properly audit the financial statements of Zungui Haixi Corp. ahead of the Chinese shoe maker completing a 39.8 million Canadian dollar ($38.1 million) initial public offering in 2009 and listing its shares on the junior Canadian TSX Venture Exchange. The allegations come after the Ontario Securities Commission in December alleged the big accounting firm failed to adequately audit the financial statements of Sino-Forest Corp. between 2007 and 2010.

Amid skyrocketing professional fees, the United States and the United Kingdom have figured out that the self-regulated industry of salvaging distressed companies is in desperate need of rescue. Not so in Canada, the Financial Post reported in a commentary. Consider the four-and-a-half-year winding down of Nortel Networks Corp.

GM Canada faces billions of dollars worth of liabilities later this decade, most of which will come due as vehicle production declines in Oshawa, The Globe and Mail reported. Pension costs are scheduled to soar, interest-free loans from governments will hit their repayment date and payments on a note issued to finance health care costs start kicking in as production commitments the company made to the federal and Ontario governments in 2009 expire.

More than 1,000 creditors of the European operations of failed U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers will share a 3.5 billion pound ($5.5 billion) payout next week, its administrators said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The payout means the recovery so far for creditors from one of the banking collapses at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis is 68.5 cents in the dollar. PricewaterhouseCoopers, joint administrators for Lehman Brothers International (Europe), said a dividend of 43.3 percent of what creditors were owed - the second so far - would be paid on June 28.

G8 leaders tried to plug the holes in their public finances with a sweeping commitment to shake-up international corporate tax rules, including a new crackdown on tax evasion and the shadowy owners of shell companies, the Financial Times reported. The leaders of eight of the world’s biggest economies signed a 10-point Lough Erne Declaration that calls for tax authorities around the world to automatically share information.

The patient is doing better but is still in intensive care: That’s the Bank of Canada’s latest assessment of risks to the Canadian financial system amid a prolonged period of fragility for the global economy, The Globe and Mail reported. Risks to the Canadian financial system “have decreased somewhat” in the past six months, the Bank of Canada said in a report issued Thursday, the first release from the bank under the watch of new governor Stephen Poloz. The bank cited an easing of short-term risks in the U.S.

David Cameron’s hopes of agreeing an international deal on fighting tax evasion suffered a blow when Bermuda said it would not commit to a pact before next week’s summit of the Group of Eight leading economies, the Financial Times reported. UK officials fear that if some British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies fail to come into line, it could limit the scope for an ambitious agreement at the summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

A U.S. judge Tuesday approved Arcapita Bank B.S.C.'s plan to gradually liquidate itself in a process that conforms with Islamic Shariah law, which generally prohibits borrowing money with interest, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Bahrain investment firm entered bankruptcy protection last year with a goal of restructuring itself but ended up with a plan to orderly liquidate its private-equity investments.

It has been billed by the British government as “a turning point” in the battle against tax evasion and avoidance. When world leaders gather in Northern Ireland next week, they will set out to end tax havens and stem the illicit flow of funds out of some of the world’s poorest countries, the Financial Times reported. The agenda – focused on the ‘three Ts” of trade, tax and transparency – is both technically and politically challenging.