Google Inc. has been selected as the stalking-horse bidder for the entire patent portfolio of former telecommunications giant Nortel Networks Corp., administrators for the insolvent Canadian company said Monday, the Financial Post reported. Mountain View, California-based Google has entered a bid of US$900-million for a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents that cover device and network technologies. Google’s stalking-horse offer is designed to attract higher bids from other interested groups, which could include BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. An auction is slated for June.

A new group of noteholders has signed on to support a prepackaged bankruptcy plan for Mexican satellite company Satelites Mexicanos S.A. de C.V., which emerged from an earlier Chapter 11 restructuring in 2006, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The company, known as Satmex, said more than 66% of the holders of its first priority senior secured notes due 2011 executed a restructuring support agreement with the company, under which they agree to back the company's prepackaged Chapter 11 plan.

Canadian drug maker Angiotech Pharmaceuticals Inc. says a "large consortium" of its creditors is backing the reorganization strategy it proposed in its home country, and it's asking a U.S. bankruptcy judge to sign off on the restructuring plan that it will put before a Canadian court on April 6, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. In papers filed Friday with the U.S.

The world’s most powerful central banks joined forces to sell billions of dollars worth of yen, battling speculators – described as “sneaky thieves” by one Japanese official – who have driven the currency to record highs, the Irish Times reported. The intervention by banks including the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan and Bank of England began early yesterday, after ministers from the Group of Seven most industrialised nations approved the first such co-ordinated action in more than a decade.

U.S. private-equity fund TPG Capital and Japanese consumer lender J-Trust are the likely contenders to take over failed consumer lender Takefuji, in a decision to be announced as early as the end of this month, according to sources familiar with the situation, The Wall Street Journal reported. TPG Capital, Cerberus Capital Management, J Trust, Tokyo Star Bank and Korea's A&P Financial are the five finalists for the final round of bidding, the people said.

Pacific Investment Management Co. sees the potential for better returns from selling insurance against sovereign defaults than owning government bonds, according to London-based managing director Andrew Balls, Bloomberg reported. “Rather than taking exposure to interest-rate risk, it may be attractive to sell protection against the default of a country,” Balls told reporters at a media briefing in London today. “I would see the probability of default from the U.S. or U.K.

General Motors Corp. is pushing to speed up a restructuring at its European Opel operation, long an unprofitable quagmire for the auto maker and the missing link in its budding turnaround, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. GM Chairman and Chief Executive Dan Akerson, impatient with the losses, is turning his attention to the Opel problem now that the company has returned to the public markets and is producing a solid profit in North America, people familiar with the matter said.

Anglo Irish Bank has said for the first time that it is likely to object formally to David Drumm’s debt to the bank being written off by a Boston court, the Irish Times reported. The disclosure is made in the bank’s latest filing to the US court in the bankruptcy proceedings being taken by its former chief executive. To succeed in preventing Mr Drumm’s debt to Anglo being written off, it will have to demonstrate to the court that he has acted in bad faith.

The Justice Department's bankruptcy trustee is protesting Bahrain's Awal Bank BSC's request to withhold from public view amounts owed to creditors and other financial details typically exposed in Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The objection filed Wednesday puts the bankruptcy trustee at odds with the foreign administrator that Bahraini authorities have appointed to manage Awal's insolvency proceedings around the globe. That administrator has said that withholding specific creditor details is in line with procedures followed in Bahrain.

The court-appointed trustee overseeing the liquidation of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s broker-dealer business is in line for more than $4 billion in a little noticed portion part of a bankruptcy judge's ruling turning aside Lehman's bid to revisit the sale of the business to Barclays PLC, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. In U.S.