B.C. Finance Minister Mike de Jong has resorted to corporate and personal income taxes hikes for the first time in his party’s 12 year reign, on the eve of an election that threatens to unseat the B.C. Liberal government, The Globe and Mail reported. In his quest to deliver a $197-million surplus budget in advance of the May 14 election, Mr. de Jong has abandoned a long-standing commitment to driving economic growth through tax cuts to business and high income earners.

The Official Stanford Investors Committee and the court-appointed receiver of Allen Stanford's financial empire have sued Antigua and Barbuda, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and 23 former Stanford Financial Group Co executives, accusing them of assisting in the financier's $7 billion (4.5 billion pounds) Ponzi scheme, Reuters reported. The committee is seeking at least $90 million of transfers to Antigua, according to the complaint filed on February 15 in U.S. Federal Court in Dallas. It also is seeking punitive damages.

The government of Belize proposed new terms to restructure the country's $544 million in debt Tuesday in an offer that extended the maturity of the debt and reduced coupon payments, Dow Jones reported. In an address to the nation's House of Representatives, Prime Minister Dean Barrow said the terms of the new plan extend the defaulted bond's maturity to 2038, from 2029, while they reduce the coupon to 5%, from 8.5%. The agreement would provide the country $247 million in relief over the next 10 years, Mr. Barrow said.

Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank, the first Gulf company to file for bankruptcy in the United States under Chapter 11 rules, said on Saturday it had submitted a plan to reorganise the company, Reuters reported. The investment firm filed for bankruptcy in New York in March and was given court approval in November to take out a $125 million sharia-compliant loan to provide funding while it restructured its debts. Arcapita's case is being closely watched in the Gulf, where companies have little recourse to orderly ways of dealing with insolvency.

A complex restructuring plan for Punch Taverns, the debt-laden landlord group that owns almost one in 10 British pubs, is likely to face criticism from senior bond holders who doubt the company's claims that it will create a "sustainable capital structure", The Guardian reported.

Boeing Co has sued its Russian and Ukrainian partners in satellite launch service Sea Launch, saying they refused to pay it more than $350 million following the joint-venture's bankruptcy filing in 2009, Reuters reported. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Friday, targeted RSC Energia, a company partially owned by the Russian government, and two Ukrainian state-owned companies, PO Yuzhnoye Mashinostroitelny Zavod and KB Yuzhnoye.

Air Canada is contravening federal law by not maintaining heavy-maintenance operations in Canada, the Quebec Superior Court ruled Monday, Global Regina reported on a Canadian Press story. In a 39-page ruling, Justice Martin Castonguay said the airline has an obligation under the Air Canada Public Participation Act to maintain such operations in Montreal and Winnipeg, along with Mississauga, Ont., where smaller overhaul work was completed by Aveos Fleet Performance until it closed last year.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the U.S. parent of an insolvent Toronto company is entitled to the Canadian entity’s last $6.75-million, instead of a group of the firm’s retirees, whose pensions were cut after their employer went under, The Globe and Mail reported. The court’s ruling in the case of Indalex Ltd., which plunged into bankruptcy protection in 2009, was is expected to have broad implications for other companies and pension plans across the country.

Some global banks are using models that let them hold only one-eighth of the capital held by their competitors against the same assets, according to a new study that will boost claims that banks are manipulating the key measure of bank safety, the Financial Times reported. The study by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision comes at a time when investors, regulators and some bankers have called into question the way banks calculate their risk-weighted assets (RWA), which in turn determine how much capital they have to hold.

Almost eight months after it heard oral arguments in the case, the Supreme Court of Canada will be releasing its decision in Sun Indalex Finance, LLC v. United Steelworkers on Friday, Feb. 1, 2013 at 9:45 AM, the Financial Post reported. The case involves an appeal from the Ontario Court of Appeal’s April 2011 judgment in Re Indalex Limited, a landmark case holding that pension plan deficiency claims can have priority over the claims of debtor-in-possession (DIP) lenders in the context of Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceedings.