Pet supply store Petcetera said Monday it plans to file for creditor protection in hopes of restructuring its operations, The Calgary Herald reported. The retailer, which has 18 stores across the country, also said it will cut the price on everything in its stores to help generate cash while it files its notice of intention to make a proposal under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. Petcetera has more than 300 employees in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia.

Home builder Corporación Geo SAB is preparing to file for bankruptcy protection in Mexico as early as Thursday to restructure a roughly $1.5 billion debt load that has brought its output to a near-standstill, people familiar with the company's plans said, The Wall Street Journal reported. Geo, hurt by problems in Mexico's low-income housing sector, is preparing to file a streamlined bankruptcy in a Mexican court. The company is in talks with a creditor group on a $200 million to $300 million loan to fund its restructuring, some of these people said.

Two months before Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy it was sued by a customer seeking the return of funds in a case that highlights some of the red flags raised in the run-up to the collapse of what was once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, Reuters reported. New York resident Marko Simovic filed a civil action at the Tokyo District Court on Dec. 24, seeking to recover $105,000 he had on deposit at Mt. Gox and about $14,000 in interest, court filings show. Simovic, who described himself as a software developer who previously managed the bitcoin operations for a hedge fund, said Mt.

A federal judge in Chicago froze the U.S. assets of the chief executive of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox as part of a customer lawsuit against the defunct bitcoin trading exchange, The Wall Street Journal reported. Separately, regulators took steps to gain greater control of the fledgling virtual currency and protect consumers from bitcoin scammers.

The amount of debt globally has soared more than 40 percent to $100 trillion since the first signs of the financial crisis as governments borrowed to pull their economies out of recession and companies took advantage of record low interest rates, according to the Bank for International Settlements, Bloomberg reported. The $30 trillion increase from $70 trillion between mid-2007 and mid-2013 compares with a $3.86 trillion decline in the value of equities to $53.8 trillion in the same period, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

One thing we can tell you about the Mt. Gox bankruptcy case: It won’t be like any other bankruptcy case you’ve seen, The Wall Street Journal MoneyBeat blog reported. MoneyBeat had a very enlightening and interesting talk with Christopher Mirick, a partner at the international law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, operating in the firm’s Insolvency & Restructuring practice.

The management of German rooftop PV installer and module manufacturer Centrosolar has unveiled an insolvency plan, which has been approved by the company’s creditors’ committee. The main thrust of the plan is that Centrosolar will in future focus on the US market, trading as Centrosolar America. The plan still requires several further stages of approval before it can be implemented, PV-Tech reported. Centrosolar said that in order to save costs, the parent company will be “slimmed down” considerably.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc's bankruptcy estate has struck a deal to resolve a five-year-long dispute involving its Swiss affiliate, clearing the way to distribute $1.8 billion to creditors, Reuters reported. The deal would enable the estate of Lehman to resolve one of its largest outstanding claims since the investment bank's September 2008 collapse, a major spark in the global financial crisis, and close a settlement from last year with Lehman Brothers Finance AG, the Swiss affiliate that specialized in equities derivatives. The settlement with the Swiss unit was approved by the U.S.

Honduras’s credit rating was cut by Moody’s Investors Service after the Central American nation’s deficit surged last year and the government boosted sales of short-term domestic debt, Bloomberg News reported. Moody’s lowered Honduras’s credit rating to B3 from B2 today, putting the $18.4 billion economy in the same category as the Democratic Republic of Congo and Argentina. The move comes about one month after President Juan Orlando Hernandez took office vowing to tackle the deficit and as his finance minister seeks an accord with the International Monetary Fund.

The TSX-listed stock of North American gold producer Veris Gold on Monday climbed after the company announced that a restructuring committee announced earlier this month was investigating strategic alternatives and to plan the financial restructuring of the company, Mining Weekly reported. The special committee had retained investment bank Raymond James & Associates as its sole investment banking advisor to provide financial advice concerning a variety of potential business transactions that may be undertaken in the course of the financial restructuring of the company.