When it comes to rescuing banks, the Swedes are earning a reputation as trendsetters. First they set a standard for recovering from disaster; now they want to export their idea for how to pay for it, The New York Times reported. The country went through its own crippling banking crisis during the early 1990s, after the bursting of a domestic credit bubble. It rebounded relatively smoothly through an aggressive bailout policy built around nationalization and carving the troubled assets of banks off into a so-called bad bank.

When Nortel Networks Corp. sought court protection from its creditors last January, its chief executive officer, Mike Zafirovski, promised creditors and employees that the telecommunications company would stanch its debt wounds and re-emerge in fighting form, The Globe and Mail reported in an analysis. But the pledge, like Mr. Zafirovski, was gone by summer.

A delegation from the Swedish government will meet with General Motors next week in the United States to discuss the future of loss-making car unit Saab, Sweden's national news agency said on Tuesday. Representatives from Sweden's finance and industry ministries will meet in Detroit with Saab parent GM and Ford, currently in the process of selling its Swedish car unit Volvo Cars. "As we understand it, GM has not closed the door to a sale (of Saab), even if the official line is a wind-down," state secretary Joran Hagglund said.

Canada's industry minister approved Ciena Corp's $769 million bid for a unit of bankrupt Nortel Networks Inc. and said on Tuesday the deal was likely to be of net benefit for Canada, Reuters reported. "This investment will maintain jobs, R&D activity and corporate leadership in Canada, Industry Minister Tony Clement said in a late night statement that also noted Ciena's promise to invest in Canada.

Foreign investors were a major force in New York’s real estate boom of the last decade, with families and companies from Dubai to Australia swallowing weekend apartments and Midtown office towers. In 2007, the roster of international investors came to include a British firm, Dawnay Day, whose executives had a splashy reputation for spending millions on fine art and yachts, The New York Times reported. The efforts [to regentrify East Harlem neighborhoods], though, didn’t get far before the recession spread across the globe and Dawnay Day went bust.

The International Banking Corp., a Bahrain-based provider of commercial loans, filed a Chapter 15 bankruptcy petition, seeking protection from U.S. creditors, The China Post reported. TIBC had assets of US$4 billion and liabilities of US$2.6 billion as of July 31, according to documents filed in Manhattan court Monday. TIBC is under administration proceedings in Bahrain, with Trowers & Hamlins Services Ltd. acting as administrator, and Zolfo Cooper hired for restructuring work.

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.

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.

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.