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Sears Canada Inc. yesterday was granted court approval to proceed with a sale process that would allow the retailer to consider a range of potential deals, Reuters reported. A report by the court-appointed monitor FTI Consulting posted on its website on Wednesday said that more than 20 parties have signed non-disclosure agreements with Sears Canada as part of the planned sale process. Earlier this week, Edward Lampert's ESL Partners LP and Fairholme, which own about two-thirds of Sears Canada, said that they were considering a potential deal with the retailer and had engaged a legal adviser. The sale process, which will be conducted by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc, would consider bids and proposals for deals involving its business, assets and leases, either in whole or in part. Sears Canada, which in 2012 was spun off from U.S. retailer Sears Holdings Corp, filed for creditor protection in June and laid out a restructuring plan that included cutting 2,900 jobs and closing roughly a quarter of its stores.

Sears Canada Inc. today sought court approval for its restructuring efforts, two weeks after the Canadian retailer filed for creditor protection, Reuters reported. The company also said that it would suspend payments to its suppliers, landlords and retirement benefits to its employees. Sears Canada said that it also sought court approval for a sale and investment solicitation process. The company set Oct. 4 as the deadline to obtain court approval of successful bids, while the company's sale and investment solicitation process has an expected completion date of Oct. 25.

Embattled airbag maker Takata Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan and said that it would seek $1.588 billion in financial aid from U.S.-based auto parts supplier Key Safety Systems, Reuters reported yesterday. The KSS deal would help it deal with the fallout from its defective airbag inflators at the centre of the global auto industry's biggest ever recall, the two companies said in a joint statement. The filing at the Tokyo District Court followed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in the United States. As part of the bankruptcy protection plans, KSS would acquire all of Takata's assets barring certain assets and operations related to the airbag inflators involved in the global recall in the planned deal worth $1.59 billion. Takata would keep operations of its affected inflators for now to continue supplying recall replacement parts, and would eventually wind down those operations, the two companies said in a statement.

Oi SA has unveiled a plan that facilitates the early repayment of small debts to suppliers and contractors, as Brazil's No. 4 wireless carrier seeks to emerge faster from creditor protection, Reuters reported yesterday. The plan was made public in newspaper ads on Friday. Under its terms, all creditors will be eligible for an early repayment of their debts to a maximum limit of 50,000 reais ($15,000) each. According to Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder, the plan seeks Oi's so-called Classes 1, 3 and 4 of creditors to negotiate ahead of a vote on the carrier's bankruptcy plan. About 53,000 out of Oi's 55,000 creditors can be considered as small creditors, he said.

Liquidators in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) will wind up another unit of the Pacific Andes group outside the New York bankruptcy. Additionally, publication of the group's 2016 will be delayed as a company-ordered forensic review of its finances lumbers on, UnderCurrentNews.com reported yesterday. On June 2, a BVI court gave liquidators at the firm FTI Consulting the go ahead to wind up Richtown Development, a BVI-registered company, that sits roughly in the middle of the legal ownership chart of the group. According to documents submitted as part of a $1.5 billion New York bankruptcy proceeding, Pacific Andes International Holdings (PAIH) is the top holding company for the fishing firm, which is based in Hong Kong, but relies on a complex network of over 100 subsidiaries registered across the globe to do its work. PAIH, through two other subsidiaries, indirectly owns Richtown, which in turn indirectly has ownership stakes in some of the group's lucrative Peruvian fishmeal and fish oil production businesses. Over two dozen of those companies have filed for bankruptcy protection in New York where they are still managed by the Ng-family that founded the group.

U.S. Steel Canada Inc., known as Stelco, has asked a New York judge to formally recognize its Canadian restructuring efforts, a condition of the company’s plan to finalize a bankruptcy takeover by Bedrock Industries L.P. by the end of June, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Stelco sought chapter 15 protection on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Court approval of the restructuring plan in both Canada and the U.S. will help the steel producer avoid potential disruptions from creditors after it emerges from bankruptcy. Lawyers for Stelco said in court papers that U.S. creditors have had ample time to make claims in the Canadian proceeding. Stelco’s parent is U.S. Steel Corp., one of the largest steel producers in North America, which acquired the company in 2007 just before the financial crisis dealt a blow to the steel market. With more than C$2 billion (US$1.48 billion) in debt it couldn’t afford to repay, Stelco kicked off the equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy in Canada in 2014 after “several years of significant operational and economic challenges,” court papers filed on Friday said. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

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Some banks go to the international markets when they need money for a big deal. Monte dei Paschi di Siena, one of Italy’s biggest lenders, tapped its own loyal customers, the New York Times reported today. “The bank has always been a gold mine and the pride of the city,” said Paolo Emilio Falaschi, a lawyer in Siena who represents several aggrieved clients. The aftershocks of that strategy have presented European leaders with their first major too-big-to-fail moment, as authorities on Thursday gave the initial greenlight for a bailout of Monte dei Paschi. Monte dei Paschi never recovered from its ill-fated and costly deal; the firm has been marred for years by scandal, management upheaval and hefty losses. As the bank runs low on cash, the Italian government is stepping in to help, with plans to inject as much as 20 billion euros into Monte dei Paschi and other troubled lenders. European regulators gave their preliminary approval to the Monte dei Paschi deal on the condition that the bank go through an in-depth restructuring and its finances pass muster.