The Finnish paper company Stora Enso Oyj agreed to pay $8 million to end a nearly nine-year-old antitrust lawsuit accusing a former unit of conspiring to fix prices for purchasers of coated paper used in magazines and catalogs, Reuters reported. According to a filing on Monday with the U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the settlement resolves claims against Stora Enso and the former Stora Enso North America Corp unit, which was sold in 2007 and is now known as NewPage Wisconsin System Inc after going through bankruptcy.

Lone Pine Resources Inc. failed to make a US$10.1-million, semi-annual interest payment on its senior secured notes Thursday, setting the clock ticking on a possible default the could force the natural gas and light oil developer to seek protection from creditors, Stockhouse reported. The company, incorporated in Delaware but headquartered in Calgary, said failure by Lone Pine Resources Canada Ltd. to make the payment will result in default on the 10.375 per cent senior notes maturing in 2017 unless remedied within 30 days.

The U.S.-based company whose train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Que., last month announced Wednesday that it has filed for bankruptcy protection in both Canada and the United States, The Globe and Mail reported. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway issued a statement Wednesday afternoon saying it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Maine. The Canadian division of the company also filed a petition under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act with the Superior Court of Quebec in Montreal, according to the statement.

HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's biggest bank, said it could take a hit of up to $1.6 billion (1 billion pounds) in a settlement with a U.S. regulator over allegations it mis-sold mortgage-backed bonds during the housing bubble, Reuters reported. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has alleged 18 banks misrepresented the quality of the collateral backing securities between 2005 and 2008. Swiss bank UBS paid $885 million in a settlement with the FHFA last month and Citigroup and General Electric have settled for undisclosed sums.

Syncapse, the social media marketing management company that had hoped to provide enterprise-level solutions for companies such as Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson on Facebook, has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in U.S. federal court, Business Insider reported. Syncapse was one of Facebook's "preferred marketing developers," a company that qualifies to serve ads into, and gather analytics from, the social network. The move suggests that the economics of social media marketing, absent being acquired by a bigger company, are more difficult than they may appear.

Seán Dunne’s adjudication as a bankrupt in Ireland marks the culmination in a five-month legal effort by one of his biggest lenders, Ulster Bank. The court’s ruling makes Dunne unique among the many former high-flying players of the boom-time property market – he is now bankrupt in two countries: Ireland, where he racked up debts of more than €700 million, and the United States, where he has lived for three years and is trying to start anew, the Irish Times reported.

Maxcom filed for pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a U.S. court, legal filings showed, as the Mexican telecoms firm pursues a recapitalization plan that would give full control to a investor group led by private equity firm Ventura Capital, Reuters reported. Small phone companies in Mexico have struggled to compete with billionaire businessman Carlos Slim's America Movil, which has about 70 percent of Mexican mobile connections and about 80 percent of the country's fixed lines.

Indebted Spanish media company Promotora de Informaciones SA has weighed filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S., according to several people familiar with the matter, the latest indication of the troubled financial state of Spain's largest media company, The Wall Street Journal reported. The possible move by Prisa, as the company is known, comes as it seeks to refinance about $3 billion of debt, the people said. The discussions of different restructuring options are still fluid and nothing has yet been decided, they added.

The National Asset Management Agency has taken a fresh legal challenge against property developer Sean Dunne in a bid to stop him walking away from debts of more than €700 million in the United States, the Irish Times reported. The State loans agency, which has a judgment debt of €185 million against Mr Dunne, filed a legal complaint within Mr Dunne’s US bankruptcy proceedings in a Connecticut court seeking to block his discharge from bankruptcy, which would prevent him embarking debt-free on a fresh financial start.

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.