Finance ministers from the Group of 20 leading nations plan to launch a new phase of the international crackdown on corporate tax avoidance this week even as UK business leaders are warning their government to resist “radical new solutions” to profit shifting by multinationals, the Financial Times reported. Britain has taken a lead in pressing for reform of the international tax rules after a wave of public anger over the low tax bills paid by some large multinationals.

Brazilian power company Energisa SA on Thursday agreed to acquire control of Grupo Rede Energia SA, sealing a deal aimed at steering the former rival out of bankruptcy protection. Energisa has offered to pay creditors 1.95 billion reais ($862 million) and pump an additional 1.1 billion reais of fresh investments into the company, Reuters reported. Rede Energia has been struggling since energy regulator Aneel seized eight of its units last August in an effort to prevent it from halting electricity service in six states.

In Seoul's upscale Gangnam neighborhood, made famous by pop star Psy's viral music video, government curbs on real-estate lending froze a market in which home prices had been rising as fast as 25% a year, The Wall Street Journal reported. In Toronto, housing prices reversed their rapid rise and fell for five months after the government changed rules to effectively increase monthly payments on new loans.

Creditors of Brazil's Grupo Rede Energia SA, a power distributor seeking to exit bankruptcy protection, approved on Friday a takeover plan by rival Energisa SA that would reduce losses on their investments in the company, Reuters reported. The plan, under which Energisa would take control of Rede and revamp it, must be submitted for final approval by the bankruptcy court, Thomas Felsberg, Rede's lawyer, said. Creditors voted on Energisa's bid and a bid by CPFL Energia SA and Equatorial Energia SA at an assembly.

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista's EBX Group, a once high-flying industrial conglomerate, began breaking up on Thursday, the latest victim of a decade-long commodities boom that has come to a screeching halt, Reuters reported. Batista, the founder and vital force behind the oil, energy, port, shipbuilding and mining group who branded all his companies with an "X" for "the multiplication of wealth," stepped down as chairman of MPX Energia SA, the embattled EBX Group's most promising company.

Argentina asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a lower-court ruling against it in a case over the nation’s defaulted debt, Bloomberg reported. The South American nation claims a federal appeals court in New York was wrong when it ruled in October that investors in restructured Argentine debt can’t be paid unless holders of the nation’s defaulted bonds, led by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp. and its NML Capital Ltd. unit, are also paid.

OSX Brasil SA, the shipbuilding company of billionaire Eike Batista, on Monday denied a report it failed to make payments on debt held by Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, Reuters reported. The local Folha da S.Paulo newspaper reported on Sunday that Batista's OSX Brasil was struggling to avoid bankruptcy after it defaulted on some 500 million reais ($222 million) in debt held by Acciona. "The story on the supposed debt with supplier Acciona that OSX CN failed to honor is false," OSX said in a market filing with regulator CVM on Monday. Representatives of Acciona in Spain had no comment.

Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista is struggling to avoid bankruptcy of its shipyard and ship leasing company OSX Brasil after it defaulted on some 500 million reais ($222 million) in debt owed to Spanish infrastructure group Acciona, Folha de S.Paulo daily reported on Sunday. OSX Brazil, which recently fired 300 employees to cut costs, is now under pressure from banking creditors to pay off or renegotiate some 2 billion reais in short-term debt, the newspaper reported without revealing its source.

Edno Santana de Vasconcelos, a resident of Brasília, was delighted when he secured a new dwelling earlier this year under the government’s “my home, my life” housing programme for lower income earners. But if he thought the scheme, with its subsidised mortgage, was generous he was more impressed this week to learn of the government’s “my better home” plan, the Financial Times reported. This is a line of cheap credit entitling people in the housing scheme to buy up to R$5000 ($2,334)-worth of washing machines, fridges or televisions for their new digs.

Central bank forum the Bank for International Settlements laid out a blueprint on Sunday for how to recapitalise a major lender in the event of a failure, seeking to avoid the sort of chaotic ad hoc rescues seen since 2008's financial crash, Reuters reported. Authorities have been grappling since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers five years ago with the question of how banks regarded as systemically important - or too big to fail (TBTF) - can be recapitalised without causing panic and without needing taxpayer cash.