Indebted Spanish media company Promotora de Informaciones SA has weighed filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S., according to several people familiar with the matter, the latest indication of the troubled financial state of Spain's largest media company, The Wall Street Journal reported. The possible move by Prisa, as the company is known, comes as it seeks to refinance about $3 billion of debt, the people said. The discussions of different restructuring options are still fluid and nothing has yet been decided, they added.

In Seoul's upscale Gangnam neighborhood, made famous by pop star Psy's viral music video, government curbs on real-estate lending froze a market in which home prices had been rising as fast as 25% a year, The Wall Street Journal reported. In Toronto, housing prices reversed their rapid rise and fell for five months after the government changed rules to effectively increase monthly payments on new loans.

The National Asset Management Agency has taken a fresh legal challenge against property developer Sean Dunne in a bid to stop him walking away from debts of more than €700 million in the United States, the Irish Times reported. The State loans agency, which has a judgment debt of €185 million against Mr Dunne, filed a legal complaint within Mr Dunne’s US bankruptcy proceedings in a Connecticut court seeking to block his discharge from bankruptcy, which would prevent him embarking debt-free on a fresh financial start.

Rona Inc, Canada's biggest home-improvement retailer and distributor, will close stores, cut jobs and reduce costs in the second phase of a restructuring plan designed to return it to profitability, the company said on Thursday. Rona said it plans to close 11 unprofitable stores; reduce administrative, marketing, merchandising and distribution costs; and cut a further 125 administrative jobs.

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.