Mt. Gox Co., once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, won approval of its U.S. bankruptcy filing, giving a boost to a Japanese investigation into the disappearance of 650,000 units of the digital currency, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey G. Jernigan said today in Dallas she has “ample legal authority” to accept the U.S. filing and recognize Mt. Gox’s Japanese bankruptcy as the foreign main proceeding. The ruling empowers the company’s Japanese trustee to examine witnesses, gather and review evidence, and oversee assets in the U.S., such as servers.

Japanese consumer lender Aiful Corp said on Friday its creditors had agreed with the company's plans to restructure 52.7 billion yen ($517.22 million) of the company's total 162 billion yen in debt, Reuters reported. Aiful will repay the rest of the debt by taking out other loans and will buy back debt from creditors. Conditions on the buybacks were not disclosed, but the company said it will exchange outstanding debt for newly issued bonds that will pay 8 percent and mature in 2020.

Competition to acquire the French energy equipment maker Alstom was expected to intensify on Monday, as Siemens of Germany and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan were said to be preparing to make a joint offer that could pressure General Electric to improve its $13.5 billion bid, the International New York Times DealBook blog reported. G.E.’s bid for Alstom’s power generation and transmission business, made in April, has been opposed by French government officials even though Alstom’s board approved the deal.

Bitcoin company CoinLab Inc. has thrown its support behind Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox's U.S. bankruptcy case, a change of course for CoinLab, which has sued Mt. Gox for $75 million, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lawyers for CoinLab said in court papers Friday that they wouldn't object to Mt. Gox's formal request for U.S. bankruptcy protection, despite earlier hints that they might challenge that request. Court documents offered no explanation for CoinLab's decision. Japanese insolvency expert Nobuaki Kobayashi, who is leading Mt.

U.S. and Canadian customers of failed Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox have agreed to settle their proposed class action lawsuits that alleged the company defrauded them of hundreds of millions of dollars, Reuters reported. The class action plaintiffs agreed to support a plan by Sunlot Holdings to buy the shuttered exchange and accept their share of bitcoins still held by Mt. Gox, according to a statement and court filings. Mt.

Tokyo District Court ordered liquidation to begin at failed bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, the company said on Thursday, after the bankruptcy administrator said on April 16 that it would be difficult to rehabilitate the firm, Reuters reported. Mt. Gox, once the largest bitcoin exchange in the world, filed for bankruptcy protection on February 28, saying that 750,000 of its customers' bitcoins had been taken from the exchange due to a security flaw in its code, as well as 100,000 belonging to the exchange. It also said that $27 million was missing from its bank accounts.

Mt. Gox customers with frozen bitcoin accounts are targeting Chief Executive Mark Karpeles, arguing in court papers he is unfit to lead the Japanese bitcoin exchange through its U.S. bankruptcy case, The Wall Street Journal reported. In papers filed Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas, lawyers for several Mt. Gox customers pointed out Mr. Karpeles has been accused of fraud and said he should no longer have power over Mt. Gox's U.S. assets in his official role as Mt. Gox Co.'s foreign representative.

A group of investors seeking to buy Mt. Gox has launched a website to garner support from creditors of the bankrupt bitcoin exchange to prevent a liquidation of its assets, Reuters reported. "We need your help to stop a liquidation, which would be good neither for Mt. Gox creditors nor bitcoin's reputation with the general public and regulators," the investors wrote on the website. Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, is likely to be liquidated after a Tokyo court dismissed the company's bid to resuscitate its business, the court appointed administrator said on Wednesday.

MtGox, once the biggest bitcoin exchange in the world, is likely to be liquidated after a Japanese court denied it bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, The Guardian reported. The company's assets will be sold off and used to pay its creditors, including those with accounts on the site. But any creditor will now recoup less than their initial stake, although it remains to be seen how much the infrastructure of the firm, as well as intellectual property including the MtGox brand, is worth.

Japan’s population slid for a third year with the proportion of people over the age of 65 rising to a record, underscoring the challenge the world’s most-indebted economy faces in financing its aging society, Bloomberg News reported. The population declined by 0.17 percent to 127.3 million as of Oct. 1, as the country maintains one of the world’s lowest birth rate. People age 65 or older made up one fourth of the total, the highest-ever percentage, as postwar baby boomers head into retirement, the Internal Affairs Ministry said on its website yesterday.