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.

Global investment banks could face almost $100 billion in civil settlements from investigations into interest-rate and foreign-exchange manipulations, analysts at Stifel Financial Corp.’s KBW unit said, Bloomberg reported. Probes of the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, could cost $46 billion and currency trading inquiries could trigger another $26 billion, analysts led by Andrew Stimpson said today in a note. That’s in addition to settling claims over faulty mortgages with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which could be $24 billion, the analysts wrote.

Suntech Power Holdings Co., the Chinese maker of solar panels whose main unit is reorganizing in the Cayman Islands, told a Manhattan court that an involuntary bankruptcy petition against it in the U.S. could derail restructuring efforts, Bloomberg reported. The creditors seeking the U.S. bankruptcy are a “tiny minority,” holding only 0.27 percent of the company’s outstanding debt, Suntech said in papers filed yesterday seeking to have the case dismissed.

The Texas-based developers of a proposed liquefied natural-gas export terminal in Canada have sought a court-sanctioned reorganization to resolve disputes with other investors in the project, including a Chinese energy company, according to court documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. While the proposed Douglas Channel LNG project is much smaller than other LNG projects planned for the Pacific coast, the filing in Canada under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act—which is analogous to a Chapter 11 filing—by one of the project's key backers comes as western Canada aims to b

The leader of heavily indebted Grenada is preparing to lower the income tax threshold and make new efforts to catch tax dodgers, The Washington Post reported. The Caribbean nation’s state-run news agency said Sunday that Prime Minister Keith Mitchell is expected to announce the new tax measures during a national address this week. Mitchell recently traveled to the U.S. to meet with representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to discuss Grenada’s economy and debt burden. The island is planning a debt restructuring program.

The Grenada government says the international community is willing to restructure the debt owed to it but insists that the island would have to make sacrifices, Caribbean 360 reported. “We expect significant reduction in our debt size and debt programme, we expect to see reduction through a haircut, we expect to see the debt move over a long period with a lower interest rate,” Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell has said.

Anglo Irish Bank and its successor Irish Bank Resolution Corporation overcharged customers by an estimated $1.6 billion (€1.2 billion) and continued to overcharge since the Government liquidated the bank in February, a forensic banking specialist has claimed in a US court, the Irish Times reported. The expert witness made the claim in a legal challenge taken against IBRC’s application for bankruptcy protection in a court in Delaware by developer John Flynn and related parties who claim they were overcharged $11 million on loans of about $200 million with the bank.