United States

The London-based administrator of Awal Bank BSC said the Bahraini institution filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. in an attempt to wrest back payments made to its creditors in the U.S. before regulators seized the bank, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Awal, which filed for Chapter 11 protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan on Friday, was placed into administration in its home country in July 2009. The bank gained recognition of its foreign proceeding in U.S. courts, known as Chapter 15 bankruptcy, last year.

Bahrain-based Awal Bank BSC, controlled by Saudi Arabia's Saad Group and Saudi businessman Maan Al-Sanea, has filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, Reuters reported. According to its Chapter 11 petition filed with the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan, Awal has between $50 million and $100 million of assets, and more than $1 billion of liabilities. Saad Investments Co owns a 48 percent stake in the bank and Al-Sanea owns 47 percent, the petition shows.

Anglo Irish Bank has secured a temporary court injunction restraining the wife of its former chief executive David Drumm from transferring the couple’s former home in Co Dublin from her sole ownership back to the joint ownership of her husband and herself, The Irish Times reported.

Policy makers at the European Central Bank face the same high unemployment and slow growth that dogs their friends across the Atlantic at the Federal Reserve. But don't expect the ECB to follow the Fed in taking extraordinary measures to try to get things moving again, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Fed thinks it can and should use the tools at its disposal, in this case buying U.S. Treasury bonds to bring down long-term interest rates and goose growth, because doing so will bring down the jobless rate. The Europeans won't have any of it.

Nortel Networks Corp. Thursday postponed a hearing on the appointment of a mediator to help broker an end to disputes over the cash raised in the liquidation of its global telecommunications equipment business, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Lawyers for U.K. retirees whose pensions are in jeopardy due to Nortel's bankruptcy have petitioned to be part of the mediation, and the company is in talks with them, said James Bromley, attorney for Nortel. The Toronto company and its creditors want to summon Layn R.

Singapore billionaire Peter Lim increased his offer for Premier League soccer club Liverpool FC to £320 million ($508 million), hoping to trump a bid by New England Sports Ventures LLC of the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported. Meanwhile, lawyers for current co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett said in a London court that they had received a bid from a U.S. hedge fund, as they tried to prevent Liverpool's board from completing a sale of the club to NESV. The board last week voted to accept a roughly £300 million bid from U.S.

Adesto Technologies Inc., a developer of low-power memory chips for consumer electronics, says it has acquired intellectual property and patents from German semiconductor company Qimonda AG, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Adesto bought Qimonda intellectual property and patents related to Conductive Bridging Random Access Memory, or CBRAM, technology. The agreement includes the purchase of 30 CBRAM patent families and the licensing of additional undisclosed patents. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Two years after investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed and the financial system faltered, world leaders are deadlocked over key proposals for ensuring that such a crisis doesn't happen again, and concern is spreading that the chance for common action has waned, The Washington Post reported. Officials at agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank say they're worried about the loss of momentum, and private analysts are warning that narrow national interests could undermine further reform.

A bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved the $65 million sale of Nortel Networks Corp.'s multiservice switch business to Swedish telecom equipment vendor L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co., Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Judge Kevin Gross of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., signed off on the sale less than a week after Ericsson won an auction for the business. Ericsson beat out PSP Holding LLC, a special-purpose entity funded by Marlin Equity Partners and Canada's Samnite Technologies, which kicked off the Sept. 24 auction with a $39 million bid.

Boeing Co. is looking for new customers for the 717 planes previously flown by the low-cost arm of arm of Grupo Mexicana, which have been grounded for a month after the company filed for bankruptcy protection, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. MexicanaLink operated 20 Boeing 717s leased from Boeing Capital, according to consultancy Ascend Worldwide. Owners and lessors have repossessed a handful of the 109 planes flown by the group and are working to recover and remarket the remainder, despite faint hopes that a slimmed-down Mexicana could restart later this year.