Brazilian shopping chain Americanas SA yesterday filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy, a move that protects its U.S. assets while insolvency proceedings play out in its home country, Bloomberg News reported. The retailer nosedived in January after becoming mired in an accounting scandal. The firm, backed by billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann, filed for bankruptcy at a court in Rio de Janeiro on Jan. 19. In disclosures to investors, the firm implied it misreported numbers connected to some of its financing and wrongly deducted interest paid to lenders from its liabilities.

U.S. authorities designated cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato Ltd. as a primary money-laundering concern and charged its founder for allegedly facilitating money laundering for criminals, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Treasury Department designated Bitzlato under a section of the USA Patriot Act, a law used to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, for allegedly laundering illicit funds for ransomware actors based in Russia. This type of action, a rarely used so-called death-knell sanction that cuts off the entity from the U.S.

Scandinavian airline SAS said on Friday that it had agreed with another two of its aircraft lessors to amend the terms of existing lease contracts as part of its cost cutting efforts, Reuters reported. Crisis-hit SAS, which has been under chapter 11 protection in the U.S. since last year, said in a statement it had now amended contracts with in total 15 lessors representing 59 aircraft. "With these agreements, SAS concludes its lessor negotiations as part of the chapter 11 process," it said.

A judge in Connecticut has placed tighter restrictions on Chinese businessman and media entrepreneur Guo Wengui and his followers to end what she described as an alleged campaign of online and in-person harassment directed at a court-appointed trustee and others involved in his chapter 11 case, Reuters reported.

Japan’s financial watchdog expects the local unit of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto empire FTX will repay funds to customers starting next month, according to a senior official, Bloomberg News reported. “We have been in close communication with FTX Japan,” said Mamoru Yanase, deputy director-general of the Financial Services Agency’s Strategy Development and Management Bureau. A mid-February timeline for withdrawals announced last month by the firm is likely a product of such communication so “we are expecting that they will properly take steps based on that,” he said.

US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc. is closing the bulk of its operations in Japan as part of a move to adjust international investment amid a slump in the digital-asset sector, Bloomberg News reported. The shift comes as the firm cuts 20% of its workforce globally, the latest layoffs at the San Francisco-headquartered firm. Coinbase is scaling back in Japan even as the nation loosens some crypto rules, which has spurred rival Binance — the largest digital-asset exchange — to seek a license to return to the country.

U.S. managed services and cloud connectivity provider GTT, formerly called Global Telecom and Technology, has emerged from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases after more than two years of corporate and financial restructuring, BNAmericas.com reported. The company, which maintains ethernet and IP sites in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, first filed for bankruptcy protection in October 2021. "Over the past two years, we have concentrated relentlessly on transforming our business into a customer-focused, managed services provider with a culture of continuous improvement.

Declining world supply chain pressures are being challenged by new disruptions in China tied to the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Federal Reserve reported on Friday, Reuters reported. The regional Fed bank's December Global Supply Chain Pressure Index ticked down to 1.18 from November's revised 1.23 reading. According to the report, supply chain pressures have been easing notably since the spring of last year and bottomed in September, and have since then been bouncing around in a tight range.

The United States and Japan on Friday launched a new task force to promote human rights and international labor standards in supply chains and said they would invite other governments to join the initiative, Reuters reported. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai signed a memorandum on the initiative in Washington with Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura.

Cineworld, the British cinema operator in bankruptcy proceedings, said today that it would not sell any of its assets individually, and that it had not held discussions with AMC Entertainment about the sale of any of its theaters, Reuters reported. The British company said it would focus on selling the group as a whole rather than disposing of individual assets, along with its restructuring efforts, and was expecting to start reaching out to potential parties for a sale later this month.