Big-name bidders are circling a $640 million portfolio of soured Spanish commercial-real-estate loans, the latest sign of how private-equity firms are still trying to take advantage of the property bust even as the global economy recovers, The Wall Street Journal reported. Morgan Stanley, which is handling the sale for Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, received a handful of initial proposals at the end of last week, a person familiar with the situation said Tuesday.

Fraser Papers got the green light to proceed with its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy protection on Tuesday after creditors approved an amended restructuring agreement, The Canadian Press reported. The insolvent paper producer said the latest restructuring plan won support from 94 per cent of voters who attended a special meeting in Toronto. Votes in support of the plan represented 75 per cent of the dollar value held by the creditors. Under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, the plan needed support from two thirds of the dollar value of Fraser Paper claimants voting at the meeting.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on a visit Monday to Latin America's biggest economy, urged Brazilian officials to help the U.S. pressure China to allow its currency to appreciate, The Wall Street Journal reported. Though officials in public shied away from specifics of any plan to coordinate calls for a stronger yuan, a person familiar with the discussions said Brazil and the U.S. may speak with a common voice on the issue in a coming meeting of the Group of 20 major economies.

For the first time since the onset of the credit crisis, Moody’s has recorded a month in which not a single company defaulted on its debt, the Financial Times reported. The rating agency said on Monday that January was the first month since June 2007 when no default was recorded among the companies whose debt it rates. In comparison, eight companies defaulted in January 2010 and there were five defaults per month on average last year. The rate at which global speculative-grade companies have been defaulting has been falling with the recovery in the global economy and lending.

Canada's largest book distributor, H.B. Fenn and Company Ltd., announced Thursday that it plans to file a proposal under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, CTV.ca reported on a Canadian Press story. In a brief statement, the company said it has "encountered significant financial challenges due to the loss of distribution lines, shrinking margins and the significant shift to e-books, all of which have significantly reduced the company's revenues." " D.J. Miller, of the Toronto-based restructuring and litigation firm Thornton Grout Finnigan, said the move does not necessarily mean H.B.

The global economic crisis has forced policy makers to confront a long-simmering problem fraught with political danger: the growing burden that public pension systems are placing on government budgets in an era of large deficits and mounting debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. With the global elite gathered in Davos, there was much fretting about the threat to the developed world's public finances posed by their aging societies and slow post-crisis economic growth. Doubts about governments' ability to pay pension benefits are central to these worries.

Canadian drug and medical-device maker Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. filed for Canada's version of Chapter 11 bankruptcy Friday so it could execute a debt-for-equity swap that hands control of the company to certain bondholders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The filing comes after the Vancouver company attempted for months to execute the swap outside of court, and two days before a deadline to make a $9.7 million interest payment.

A Canadian public-sector pension fund has joined a forestry management firm in a C$415 million (A$415 million) acquisition of Australian timber lands, capitalizing on a failed government investment scheme, the companies said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Alberta Investment Management Corp and a fund run by Australia's New Forests Pty Ltd are buying the timberland assets of Great Southern Plantations, which include more than 2,500 square km (965 square miles) of land in forestry and agricultural regions in six states. The pair are buying the assets out of receivership.

Reorganized newsprint maker AbitibiBowater Inc. filed a motion to dismiss the Chapter 11 case of subsidiary Bowater Canada Finance Corp, Bloomberg reported. Although affiliates implemented their U.S. and Canadian reorganizations in December, the BCFC affiliate was dropped out because creditors of the subsidiary voted down the plan. It was agreed at the time with BCFC noteholders that the subsidiary’s U.S. Chapter 11 case would be dismissed, as would the arrangement proceeding in Canada.

Vitro SAB, Mexico’s largest glassmaker, agreed to dismiss the Chapter 15 petition it filed in New York in mid-December, according to a document submitted yesterday to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Fort Worth, Texas, where bondholders filed involuntary Chapter 11 petitions a month earlier against Vitro’s U.S. subsidiaries, Bloomberg reported. Vitro was forced into dismissing the Chapter 15 case following a ruling from a court in Mexico this month dismissing Vitro’s attempted reorganization under that country’s version of Chapter 11.