Canada's federal budget laid out plans on Thursday to impose higher capital requirements on banks whose failure could disrupt the Canadian financial system and economy, Reuters reported. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty also said the federal government would go ahead with its own capital markets regulatory framework if it cannot agree with the provinces on creating a common securities regulator.

Suntech, one of the world's biggest solar panel manufacturers, said Monday it has defaulted on a $541 million bond payment in the latest sign of the financial squeeze on the struggling global solar industry, the Associated Press reported. Suntech Power Holdings Ltd.'s announcement was a severe setback for a company lauded by China's Communist government as a leader of efforts to make the country a center of the renewable energy industry.

Suntech Power Holdings Co. said it didn't make a required payment on $541 million of bonds that matured Friday. It wasn't clear what the Chinese solar-panel company's plans were for repaying investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. A Suntech spokesman declined to comment. Suntech said last Monday that it had reached a "forbearance agreement" with about 60% of its foreign bondholders, who agreed to push back the date for repayment to May 15, allowing more time to negotiate a new repayment deal.

The U.S. and Canadian judges overseeing the long-deadlocked bankruptcy of Nortel Networks Corp. have ruled that a joint cross-border trial will be held later this year to determine how to divvy up the defunct company’s remaining $9-billion, The Globe and Mail reported. Mr. Justice Geoffrey Morawetz of the Ontario Superior Court and Chief Judge Kevin Gross of the U.S.

Grenada’s government will undertake a “comprehensive and collaborative restructuring of its public debt, it announced this weekend, the Caribbean Journal reported. The government said “circumstances have forced” the move, which will include its US and Eastern Caribbean-denominated bonds due in 2025.

Bankrupt telecoms equipment giant Nortel Networks once boasted of a global operation, but now its former world-wide units are squaring off over its last remaining asset: $9 billion in cash. Two judges, one in Wilmington, Delaware, and the other in Toronto, will jointly hear arguments on Thursday that will ultimately decide how, and when, to carve up that money, Thomson Reuters News & Insight reported. The outcome will determine how much will be available for tens of thousands of retirees, governments and hedge funds investors. "The issues which remain for decision are imposing," U.S.

One year after she predicted massive oil-sands-fueled surpluses, Alberta Premier Alison Redford is taking on debt and rolling out an austerity budget – one that flat-lines spending, abandons many of her election promises and will see the province borrow $12-billion over three years for infrastructure projects, The Globe and Mail reported. Ms. Redford’s budget, tabled Thursday, signals tough times ahead for Canada’s richest province, due in large part to forecasts of plunging oil revenue that would, ultimately, also affect the federal government’s bottom line.

For the first time in a year, Canada’s central bank on Wednesday signalled comfort with the trajectory of household debt, a shift that will allow policy makers to focus more tightly on signs of deteriorating economic growth, The Globe and Mail reported. In a revised policy statement, the Bank of Canada dropped language that was intended to signal a willingness to raise borrowing costs to curb a surge in household borrowing to record levels.

Mexico's Vitro said on Monday it had ended a lengthy legal fight with creditors after a Mexican businessman bought a chunk of the glassmaker's debt held by funds that had led the court fight, Thomson Reuters News & Insight reported. Under the deal, Monterrey-based businessman David Martinez' Fintech fund will buy all the debt held by U.S. hedge funds that were fighting Vitro in court over payment, the company said in a statement.

Argentina has greeted an order from a US appeals court for more information on its offer to holdout creditors as a glimmer of hope in its fight not to pay “vulture funds” without a steep writedown on their debt, the Financial Times reported. “We are not trying to convince the vultures to participate, we are trying to convince the judges, and that’s why it’s a good sign that the court has asked Argentina what the 2010 offer means,” Hernán Lorenzino, the economy minister, told the newspaper Página 12.