Gerova Financial Group Ltd., a Bermuda-based financial-services company, sought U.S. bankruptcy court protection listing debt of as much as $500 million, Bloomberg reported. The Hamilton-based firm, formerly known as Asia Special Situations Acquisition Corp., filed a Chapter 15 petition in Manhattan today to protect its U.S. assets from creditors. Assets were valued at more than $50 million, Gerova said. Gerova began liquidation proceedings July 20 in Bermuda. Chapter 15 shields foreign companies from U.S. lawsuits and creditor claims while a company continues the process abroad.

Belize’s government aims to restructure its debt through negotiations with bondholders and will consider any proposal presented, Prime Minister Dean Barrow told reporters in Belize City Wednesday, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. The country has worked in “good faith” with its creditors and is willing to discuss alternative restructuring scenarios, Barrow said, while stating that the government would only accept proposals that involved sustainable debt levels. “Debt sustainability is the whole and entire object of this exercise,” Barrow said.

Failed Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc, which has agreed to be bought by U.S. rival Micron Technology Inc, said on Tuesday it had submitted a restructuring plan to the Tokyo District Court, the next step in efforts to ensure the survival of some of its operations, Reuters reported. Micron agreed in early July to buy Elpida for about $750 million in cash and pay creditors a total of $1.75 billion in annual instalments through 2019. A group of Elpida bondholders said Micron is offering too little for the chipmaker. Elpida did not elaborate the content of the plan.

Belize has threatened to withhold a coupon payment due on a $547m bond this month, which could plunge the Central American country into formal default and casts a cloud over restructuring talks with creditors, the Financial Times reported. The bond maturing in 2029 is a product of a previous debt restructuring in 2006 and represents roughly half of Belize’s total public debt, according to the government. “We simply cannot afford this coupon payment given the financing shortfalls and other challenges we face,” Dean Barrow, Belize’s prime minister, said.

Shareholders of troubled timber firm Sino-Forest Corp. would receive nothing under a proposed restructuring plan that would transfer remaining assets to creditors, thestar.com reported. A once-mighty company with a market capitalization of $6 billion, Sino Forest is now in tatters as its former executives face fraud accusations that include overstating assets and sales in China. Sino-Forest says it is owed $887.4 million from authorized intermediaries, who operated on its behalf in China.

Spyker NV, the owner of Swedish car maker Saab Automobile AB before its financial collapse late last year, Monday said it has filed a $3 billion lawsuit against General Motors Co. claiming the U.S. car giant drove the Swedish company into bankruptcy, The Wall Street Journal reported. Spyker filed the claim in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan. Saab Automobile declared itself bankrupt last December, ending a long struggle for survival by the auto maker after attempts by Spyker to revive and then sell the company failed.

The Canadian economy churned out an impressive number of new jobs over the first half of the year, but is not likely to repeat the feat in the second half, The Globe and Mail reported. The odds of the unemployment rate falling much below its current 7.2 per cent over the next five months are looking increasingly dim, as economists trim their expectations for Canada’s economic growth to below 2 per cent for the rest of 2012. Signs of the sluggish economy are expected to crop up in Statistics Canada’s employment figures for July, set to be released Friday.

Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP’s U.K. administrators proposed liquidating the defunct law firm’s British assets last week a day after the German operations were put in insolvency proceedings by a Frankfurt court, Bloomberg reported. The U.K. partnership, which includes the London and Paris offices, should be moved into liquidation, administrators at BDO LLP said in a July 27 regulatory filing. White & Case LLP attorney Andreas Kleinschmidt was appointed preliminary administrator July 26 in Germany, according to the country’s online insolvency registry. Dewey’s U.S.

Embattled timber company Sino-Forest Corp., which is in bankruptcy protection, says it is owed half a billion dollars from companies that have been deregistered in China, thestar.com reported. Sino-Forest, which filed for bankruptcy protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act in March, said in a new release Tuesday that it intends “to take all steps necessary” to collect receivables owing to it. It added that it believes the deregistrations, which have the effect of terminating the existence of the entities, were improper under Chinese law.

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday held an hour-long hearing on President Barack Obama’s nomination of William J. Baer to be Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division (“DOJ”).