Sanko Steamship Co., the Japanese operator of 185 ships, asked a court to protect its U.S. assets after the company filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan, Bloomberg reported. Sanko listed assets and debt of more than $500 million in a Chapter 15 petition filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Companies use Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to protect their U.S. assets while they reorganize operations under the jurisdiction of a foreign bankruptcy court. Sanko said yesterday that the Tokyo District Court granted the closely held company permission to keep operating.

Micron Technology Inc. agreed to acquire troubled Japanese rival Elpida Memory Inc. for about $2.5 billion, as the U.S. memory maker bulks up to compete against rivals in South Korea and Taiwan, The Wall Street Journal reported. The deal would make Micron No. 2 in the market for memory chips, second only to Samsung Electronics Co. Micron, based in Boise, Idaho, currently ranks third, behind SK Hynix Inc., another Korean company that until earlier this year was called Hynix Semiconductor Inc.

One of Japan's oldest shipping firms, Sanko Steamship, filed for bankruptcy on Monday after months of battling with ship owners over the restructuring of $2 billion in debt, becoming the latest casualty of the four-year-old shipping industry downturn, Reuters reported. The dry bulk and tanker shipping firm, started in 1934, joins U.S.-based General Maritime Corp, the Containership Company, and South Korea's Korea Line in seeking bankruptcy protection amid rock bottom freight rates, an oversupply of vessels and high bunker fuel prices.

Tokyo Electric Power Co will receive fresh funding at interest rates below 1 percent from its top 10 lenders, Japanese business daily the Nikkei reported. The additional funding will total 1.07 trillion yen ($13.44 billion) - 500 billion yen of new loans, a 400 billion yen credit line and 170 billion yen in loan rollovers, the daily reported. The lenders to Japan's biggest utility, known as Tepco, include three of the largest banks in the country, three trust banks and four life insurers.

The journey from the Bank of Japan to the Diet, the country’s parliament, takes about 10 minutes by taxi on a good day and is one that Masaaki Shirakawa knows all too well, the Financial Times reported. The BoJ governor has been summoned to appear before the nation’s parliament 20 times so far this year, including a double session on Wednesday. At this rate he will smash his annual performance record of 24 days, set in 2009.

A growing number of lawmakers are pushing for greater control over the Bank of Japan, just 14 years after the central bank first won its independence, as a strong yen and runaway deficits darken Japan's economic prospects, The Wall Street Journal reported. The moves come as politicians across the spectrum, and many economists, complain that the BOJ isn't acting aggressively enough to combat the country's persistent deflation, while mammoth borrowing limits the scope of fiscal policy to boost growth.

Fortress Investment Group (FIG) and Nomura Real Estate Holdings Inc. are buying Japanese property as a record 700 billion yen ($9 billion) of commercial buildings are set to be sold over the next three years to repay debt, Bloomberg reported. About 364.6 billion yen worth of properties will be offered by next year with the rest sold through 2014 as special servicers that oversee properties tied to defaulted loans sell buildings to repay lenders, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Morgan Stanley Real Estate funds and K.K.

Two of Japan's biggest corporate wipeouts of the past decade are expected to emerge from bankruptcy in the coming months. Yet the resurrections of Ashikaga Holdings Co. and Japan Airlines Co. stand in contrast, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lender Ashikaga is a classic "zombie company," taking nearly a decade to return to life on the stock market. JAL, on the other hand, will return less than three years after it became the biggest collapse ever by a nonfinancial-services company in Japan.

A group of Elpida Memory bondholders opposes Micron Technology's offer to buy the bankrupt Japanese chipmaker and has reached out to South Korea's SK hynix and U.S.-based GlobalFoundries to ready a potential alternative plan, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said, Reuters reported. SK hynix, which had dropped out during the second and final round of bidding for Elpida, is interested in the memory chipmaker's Taipei operations, while GlobalFoundries is interested in its Hiroshima operations, said the source, who asked not to be identified.

A group of bondholders of bankrupt Japanese semiconductor maker Elpida Memory Inc have threatened to thwart the auction of the company's assets if trustees agree to a reported selling price of 150 billion yen ($1.9 billion), Reuters reported. In a filing to a Tokyo district court on April 27, the bondholders said they could submit a rival reorganisation plan if the bankruptcy trustees agreed to a low-ball bid that would "unintentionally transfer great value to the winning sponsor".