A panel seeking to restructure Canada’s frozen asset-backed commercial paper market is struggling to persuade more than a dozen Canadian and foreign banks to provide billions of dollars in back-up funding for the securities. The committee, headed by Purdy Crawford, a prominent corporate director, failed to meet Friday’s deadline for an agreement on restructuring terms, or to provide details of the assets held in 21 frozen trusts, or conduits. One trust has been restructured. David Dodge, Bank of Canada governor, warned last week that a meltdown of the highly-leveraged trusts could have a severe knock-on effect in global financial markets, affecting assets worth up to C$250bn ($246bn).
