United States

MF Global's European administrator KPMG is teaming up with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Lehman Brothers's administrator, to try to speed up the return of assets and cash to former clients of both failed brokers, Reuters reported. KPMG said on Tuesday it will work with PWC to establish whether unsecured funds can be "traced" and treated as if they were secured, following a ruling by Britain's Supreme Court.

Micron Technology won the right to negotiate exclusively to buy Elpida Memory Inc after offering more than 200 billion yen ($2.5 billion) for the failed Japanese chipmaker, according to a source with direct knowledge of the deal that would more than double the U.S. company's global market share, Reuters reported. By acquiring Elpida, Micron would boost its market share to 25 percent, surpassing South Korea's SK Hynix and becoming the second-biggest maker of DRAM memory chips used in personal computers, according to U.S. technology research firm IHS iSuppli. Samsung Electronics is the largest.

The National Asset Management Agency has intensified its legal efforts to seize international assets from bankrupt developer Ray Grehan by seeking to enter its judgment of €270 million last year from the Irish courts in the US, the Irish Times reported. Documents filed in the New York State Supreme Court show the State loans agency sought to enter the judgment for $351 million, the US dollar equivalent of the Irish court judgment, against the developer at the end of March.

A trustee for failed brokerage MF Global Inc. has begun litigation in the U.K. that aimed at recovering $700 million in customer funds, according to a statement, Bloomberg reported. The trustee, James Giddens, said in April that he had been working since November to return the money and filed a claim with the administrators overseeing the company’s MF Global UK Ltd. unit. According to today’s statement, an application for direction, which begins the legal process, has been filed with the English court.

A unit of Bahrain investment house Arcapita has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, the company said in a statement, Reuters reported. Falcon Gas Storage Company, a non-operating subsidiary of Arcapita, also intends to file a motion for joint administration with its parent company for the ongoing Chapter 11 restructuring, it said in the statement late on Monday. In March, Arcapita became the first Gulf entity to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U. S. after it was threatened with legal action if it did not repay a hedge fund in full.

When Maclaren USA entered bankruptcy in December, its Chapter 7 filing made for a lot more questions about what the company was doing in bankruptcy than it provided answers—questions that have remained largely unanswered since, The Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog reported. Why did sales drop so drastically in 2011, to $34,251 from over $20 million in 2010? Does Maclaren, the U.K.-based company that manufactures the strollers and other products, plan to continue selling in the U.S.?

Elpida Memory Inc.’s bankruptcy is fueling concern the company could be a burden to an acquirer, with shares of SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc. declining on takeover speculation, Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Investors aren’t keen on a full or partial takeover by Hynix or Micron because “they would need funds to buy Elpida’s assets, and even after an acquisition, they would need a lot of money to keep operations going,” said Yuichi Ishida, a Tokyo-based analyst at Mizuho Investors Securities Co.

International Monetary Fund staff said Tuesday governments should consider mandatory debt restructuring for systemically important banks as part of a policy tool set to prevent new financial crises, Dow Jones reported. By instituting a so-called bail-in rule, governments could prevent the type of excessive risk-taking and market disruptions that fueled the 2008-2009 global financial meltdown, senior IMF economists said in a new discussion paper.

Toshiba Corp has decided to join the bidding race to sponsor Elpida Memory Inc's turnaround from bankruptcy, setting stage for a battle with U.S.-based Micron Technology, the Nikkei business daily said, Reuters reported. Toshiba, which believes adding Elpida's cell-phone-use DRAMs to its offerings is crucial for its survival in the chip industry, might seek financial assistance from the government-backed Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corp of Japan, the newspaper said. Elpida Memory will soon stop accepting applications for the first round of bidding, Nikkei said.

Singapore's privately held PhillipCapital Group said on Wednesday it has agreed to buy a majority stake in defunct broker MF Global's Indian unit, Reuters reported. PhillipCapital, which runs brokerage and asset management business across 13 countries, said it would plan to rename the business Phillip Securities India. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed and the transaction is still subject to regulatory approval. PhillipCapital said it will buy a majority stake in the joint venture between Sify Technologies and MF Global and has also agreed to buy the rest of the bankrupt U.S.