The battle over Nortel Network's optical network division may not be over, The Ottawa Citizen reported. Nokia Siemens Networks said in a U.S. bankruptcy court filing Tuesday that it, not Ciena Corp., was the top bidder in the auction that ended a week ago. It is also ready to increase its offer to $810 million U.S. in cash, or $41 million more than the Ciena cash-and-debt offer that won the fight. The question now is how U.S. and Canadian courts handle the latest twist in the complicated business of selling off Nortel assets.

Newfoundland and Labrador Refining Corp., the Canadian company planning to build a C$4 billion ($3.8 billion) oil refinery on the country’s east coast, won a judge’s approval to exit bankruptcy and find a buyer or a partner for the project within two years, Bloomberg reported. Newfoundland Supreme Court Judge Robert Hall dismissed objections from BAE Newplan Group Ltd., a unit of SNC-Lavalin Group Inc., and Japan Steel Works Ltd., Kobe Steel Works Ltd. and IPS Services Inc., who had sought to have the Canadian company declared bankrupt.

General Motors asked European governments to help pay most of the $4.9 billion that it needs to restructure its struggling European operations, The Washington Post reported. At talks in Brussels, E.U. nations where GM has plants vowed to avoid individual negotiations with the company before a Dec. 4 meeting, where they will coordinate their response to GM's restructuring plans, due later this week.

W.C. Wood Corp., which owned a freezer factory in Ottawa, announced it couldn't find a buyer in time to avoid liquidating the entire company, Industrial Laser Solutions reported. A Canadian court placed the company in receivership, leaving the Ottawa plant's remaining 150 employees without a job. The company had been looking for a buyer since filing a Companies Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada in May. It received Chapter 15 protection in the United States in June.

Sterlite Industries (India) Ltd., India’s largest copper producer, rose to the highest price in a month in Mumbai as analysts said the company will save $2.5 billion having lost the bid to acquire bankrupt U.S. copper miner Asarco LLC, Bloomberg reported. Grupo Mexico SAB can regain control of its Tucson, Arizona- based unit Asarco, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas ruled yesterday, rejecting a competing offer from Sterlite. Grupo Mexico and Sterlite each promised to spend more than $2.5 billion to guarantee that Asarco’s creditors are repaid in full.

Presenting a plan to return UBS to profitability, the chief executive of the battered Swiss bank said Tuesday that he expects the company to be earning nearly $15 billion a year no later than 2014, The New York Times reported. Switzerland’s largest bank plans to reach pretax profit of 15 billion Swiss francs, or $14.9 billion, and a return on equity — a measure of profitability — of 15 percent to 20 percent sometime between 2012 and 2014, it said in a statement ahead of a presentation to investors Tuesday.

A Saad Group subsidiary says it is unable to make payments on a US$650 million (Dh2.38 billion) Islamic bond maturing in 2012, The National reported. Saad Trading, Contracting and Financial Services, part of the struggling family-owned conglomerate based in Saudi Arabia, said yesterday it was “impossible for the issuer to perform its payment obligations under the sukuk”. It made the disclosure in a statement to the Bahrain Stock Exchange, where the Golden Belt 1 sukuk is listed.

A Texas judge has issued final approval of Grupo Mexico SAB's plan to regain control of copper miner Asarco LLC, ending a lengthy takeover battle with rival suitor Sterlite Industries, The Associated Press reported. The ruling will return control of Asarco to Americas Mining Corp., a Grupo Mexico subsidiary. The deal is expected to close by mid-December. Under the plan, Grupo Mexico will give $2.2 billion to Asarco to be distributed to creditors together with an estimated $1.4 billion in cash held by Asarco.

Wen Jiabao, China's premier, has pledged $10 billion in new low-cost loans to Africa over the next three years and has defended his country's engagement on the continent against accusations that it is "plundering" the region's oil and minerals, The Washington Post reported. Wen made the pledge Sunday at a China-Africa summit here, at which he also urged the United States to keep its deficit to an "appropriate size" to ensure the "basic stability" of the dollar. The loan pledge for Africa was double a $5 billion commitment made in 2006.

U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner clashed over potential taxes on bank transactions at a weekend meeting here of finance policy makers from the Group of 20 leading economies, The Wall Street Journal reported. The U.K.'s Mr. Brown surprised many attendees by throwing his weight behind the idea of levying a tax on financial transactions and using those funds to pay for future bank bailouts. Germany and France reaffirmed their support for such a tax. Mr. Geithner made plain that the U.S. wouldn't support a bank-transaction tax.