Wilbur Ross, the billionaire US turnaround specialist, has bought a 21 per cent stake in Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Money for £100 million as the group prepares to make a major assault on the UK banking market, The Scotsman reported. Ross, nicknamed the "King of Bankruptcy", is also prepared to pump in "hundreds of millions" more to fund acquisitions, including Virgin's £2 billion bid for 318 Royal Bank of Scotland branches. Virgin will join Clydesdale Bank owner National Australia Bank and Santander in submitting a bid for the RBS assets ahead of tomorrow's deadline.

It will be at least another 10 weeks before the Crafar farms creditors know if they will see any cash from a proposed Chinese acquisition, The National Business Review reported. The Overseas Investment Office has requested more information from Natural Dairy (NZ) Holdings and asked it to resubmit its application to buy the Crafar family properties, placed in receivership in October last year, owing more than $200 million to lenders Rabobank and Westpac.

Another New Zealand finance company has gone into receivership, triggering a repayment to its investors under the Crown retail deposit guarantee, The National Business Review reported. Vision Securities, specialising in property finance for the retirement village sector, has been placed into receivership, close to $30 million. Its directors sought receivership from its trustee, Perpetual Trust, after failing to settle a major loan last week and concern for the company’s liquidity.

Lehman Brothers Australia Ltd. will remain in liquidation after the High Court of Australia ruled Tuesday against an arrangement that would have left creditors with small recoveries on complex structured debt products and also would have also prevented creditors from suing Lehman entities, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The City of Swan, in Perth, and the Parkes and Wingecarribie councils in New South Wales state all lost millions of dollars investing in Lehman's structured products prior to the firm's collapse in September 2008.

Alliance Bank, the second-largest Kazakh lender to default last year, said it completed restructuring 677 billion tenge ($4.6 billion) of debt, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. Under a plan accepted by creditors in December, all of Alliance’s obligations were “restructured and annulled in exchange for money, new bonds and shares,” the lender said in an e-mailed statement today. The bank plans to start borrowing from abroad next year after markets open for Kazakh lenders, Chief Executive Officer Maksat Kabashev told reporters in Almaty.

The directors of biotechnology company Botry-Zen Ltd have resigned, saying there is unlikely to be any assets remaining once receivers have finished their job, The National Business Review reported. "The board again expresses its disappointment that, due to a lack of capital, it was unable to see to fruition the good work done, and investment made, by many people over a number of years." The directors said their resignation would be effective from March 30. The biotechnology company, which was floated on the New Zealand share market in 1991, was placed in receivership in December.

The Australian company behind denim fashion label ksubi has restructured the business after a period of voluntary administration, CBC News’ Trading Room reported. ksubi Pty Ltd said on Friday the company was now controlled by a consortium of industry-experienced management, including investor Harry Hodge, co-founders Dan Single and George Gorrow, and shareholders of Bleach Pty Ltd. "In January 2010 ksubi entered into voluntary administration through Grant Thornton in an effort to restructure and consolidate the denim fashion label's business," ksubi said in a statement on Friday.

A senior Chinese central bank official criticized the handling of the Greek debt crisis, highlighting global concern about the situation in Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported. Speaking at a conference in Hong Kong, Zhu Min, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, also said China "should and could" import more goods to keep its trade surplus small. And he noted that the central bank's efforts to tighten monetary policy were having their intended effect, even without China having to raise interest rates.

Debt-ridden Japan Airlines Corp said it will suspend its scheduled freighter flight services by the end of October and would instead use the cargo belly space of passenger flights, Reuters reported. The airline's passenger flights provide cargo capacity of about three times the volume available on its scheduled freighter flights, the company said in a press release posted on its website.