Further clarity emerged this week as to what regulators will require from banks to make bank capital instruments compliant under Basel 3 when Canada released its rules on non-viability contingent capital, Reuters reported. However, while the release provided clues on how regulators will define non-viability, the implications for Europe are not obvious while current market conditions would make any issuance extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Changing demographics, increasingly vocal retirees, and the prospect of more companies finding themselves in trouble have all combined to create more interest than ever in pension law, a leading practitioner said this morning, the Canadian Lawyer Legal Feeds blog reported. “I have often marvelled myself at the interest in pension law,” Andrew Hatnay of Toronto’s Koskie Minsky LLP said at the Canadian Bar Association conference in Halifax.

Mexican glassmaker Vitro on Monday said a court in Monterrey ruled it can vote on its own inter-company debt, a sticking point that has mired the company's bankruptcy plans in court battles with creditors, Reuters reported. Vitro, which has been battling with external creditors over its plans to restructure about $3.4 billion in debt, filed a pre-packaged bankruptcy plan in December. The company, in a separate court case, had argued it should have more control over the bankruptcy proceeding because of its inter-company debt.

Nortel Networks Corp., which has been selling off all of its businesses under court protection from creditors, said Thursday it lost US$115 million in its latest quarter, the Winnipeg Free Press reported on a Canadian Press story. The former telecom hardware maker, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, said the loss amounted to 23 cents per share in the quarter ended June 30 compared with a loss of $1.6 billion or $3.22 per share a year ago. Revenue totalled $1 million for the quarter compared with $145 million in the second quarter of 2010.

Russian conglomerates Kaskol and RU-COM will increase their energy holdings by together acquiring Composite Technology Corp.'s assets out of its U.S. bankruptcy proceeding in a deal valued at more than $11 million, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The Russian companies' joint venture, called CTC Acquisition Corp., will pay $1 million in cash and take on the responsibility for at least $10.5 million of Composite Technology's liabilities, according to a purchase agreement filed Tuesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana., Calif.

A receiver continues to manage the affairs of a British Columbia-based street light technology company that received $1.5 million in investments from city-owned Hydro Ottawa, the Ottawa Citizen reported. Streetlight Intelligence Inc., a Victoria-based company that made energy-saving automated dimmer switches for street lights, went into receivership in May.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. said it settled $20 billion of intercompany claims with liquidators for Lehman Hong Kong and won the affiliate’s support for its liquidation plan, Bloomberg reported. Details of the agreement, which is subject to court approval in the U.S. and Hong Kong, weren’t provided in Lehman’s statement today. Edward Middleton, a partner at KPMG China and one of the Hong Kong liquidators, said in the statement that the settlement will benefit creditors by speeding liquidations.

Bankruptcy work may have slowed for restructuring firms in the U.S., but London is calling. And so is Paris, Frankfurt and Reykjavik, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Read more.

Britain's Supreme Court Wednesday dismissed an appeal by units of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bank of New York Mellon, a win for investors in a high-stakes legal dispute involving complex derivatives transactions that has divided courts on both sides of the Atlantic, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The U.K.'s Supreme Court, the nation's highest, unanimously ruled in favor of investors represented by Australia's Belmont Park Investments PTY Ltd.

Vitro SAB won U.S. recognition of its ongoing Mexican restructuring proceeding, a decision that shields U.S. assets from debt collection attempts by angry creditors, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Judge Harlin D. Hale of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas signed off on the Mexican glass maker's Chapter 15 petition Thursday. Read more. (Subscription required.)