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Takata Corp. said that it wants to avoid bankruptcy globally because a court-led restructuring could disrupt the supply of parts to automakers, the first public comments the embattled air-bag supplier has made on an option being considered in the U.S., Bloomberg News reported today. “We hope to have out-of-court settlement and our position hasn’t changed since the beginning,” Chief Financial Officer Yoichiro Nomura said today after the Tokyo-based company reported earnings. “There’s no other option to ensure the stable supply of the products. Court-led bankruptcy will make it difficult for the business to continue.” Takata shares have fallen 14 percent since Bloomberg reported on Sept. 16 that some form of bankruptcy proceedings were being considered by bidders for the company, which is at the center of a record auto industry recall. Autoliv Inc., Key Safety Systems Inc., Flex-N-Gate Corp. and Daicel Corp. — bidding together with Bain Capital LP — proposed bankruptcy for Takata’s U.S. unit at meetings with automakers last week in New York as a way to limit liabilities.

There is no explicit federal requirement that sellers of used cars fix problems related to safety recalls, or even disclose the recalls, the way that new -car dealers must, according to a New York Times report today. Efforts to introduce tougher laws for used cars have languished in Congress, under lobbying pressure from the used-car industry. The regulations for used-car safety affect a large swath of the population; last year, more than 38 million used cars were sold across the U.S. — more than twice as many as were sold new, according to Edmunds.com. Auctions, whether by governments or dealers, represent the least-regulated rung of the industry, often dealing in higher-risk cars that are sold to the most vulnerable consumers, said Bernard Brown, a consumer protection lawyer in Kansas City, Mo., who has closely followed auto auction companies. Despite the lack of explicit federal laws on recalled used cars, a patchwork of state consumer protections and laws already effectively prohibit the sale of dangerous vehicles, some safety advocates and lawyers say.

Toyota Motor Corp. said today that it is recalling 5.8 million vehicles around the world equipped with faulty air bags manufactured by Takata Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported. The air bags lack a drying agent to prevent the buildup of moisture, a flaw blamed for air-bag explosions that spray shrapnel into vehicle cabins — a problem linked to more than a dozen deaths and more than 100 injuries globally. The recall includes 1.16 million vehicles in Japan, 1.47 million in Europe and 820,000 in China produced between April 2006 and December 2014, Toyota said that in a statement. The latest recall announcement doesn’t include models sold in the U.S., where Toyota has already announced a recall of cars made during the same period, the company said. The recall includes a second round of recalls of around 20,000 vehicles first recalled in 2010. Those vehicles, produced between May 2000 and November 2001, had faulty Takata air bags replaced with a new set that still lacked a drying agent. The latest recall will install air bags that have the drying agent.

As a former employee who had blown the whistle on ITT, an operator of some 140 for-profit schools, Dan Graves was happy that the government had finally taken action to protect students from the company’s aggressive sales tactics, which lured them into debilitating debt and provided little in the way of an education, the New York Times reported on Saturday. Still, he wondered what had taken the government so long. After all, it has been 17 years since Graves and another former ITT employee brought a suit alleging that the company had systematically violated the law governing compensation of sales representatives. The two former employees shared extensive documentation with federal prosecutors and regulators. These officials expressed keen interest, Graves said, and estimated that the government could recover $400 million in damages from the case. But by 2004, the lawsuit was dead and Graves’s effort to provide the government with damning evidence had come to naught. Now that ITT is in bankruptcy, Graves’s whistle-blower experience is instructive: It spotlights a costly regulatory failure that allowed ITT to stay in business far longer than it otherwise might have, Graves said.

On Wall Street, moneymaking companies have long relied on confidentiality agreements to prevent employees from divulging their secrets. But now, the nation’s labor board has challenged some provisions in the contracts that Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund firm, requires each full-time employee to sign, the New York Times reported today. The unusual action is calling into question longstanding practices and prompting some companies to re-examine their employment agreements. Prompted by a sexual harassment complaint by a former Bridgewater employee, the National Labor Relations Board filed a pending administrative action against the firm this summer saying that Bridgewater “has been interfering with, restraining and coercing” employees from exercising their rights. The former Bridgewater employee, Christopher Tarui, claimed that he was the victim of sexual harassment by a male supervisor and that the hedge fund had retaliated against him when he complained.

One of Theranos Inc.’s biggest financial backers has sued the embattled startup and its founder for allegedly lying to attract its nearly $100 million investment, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Partner Fund Management LP, a San Francisco-based hedge fund, filed the suit in Delaware Court of Chancery Monday afternoon, a letter to the hedge-fund’s investors says. “Through a series of lies, material misstatements, and omissions, the defendants engaged in securities fraud and other violations by fraudulently inducing PFM to invest and maintain its investment in the company,” says the letter. The letter says that Theranos, its founder Elizabeth Holmes and a former executive deceived the hedge fund by claiming it had developed “proprietary technologies that worked,” and was close to getting regulatory approvals.

A divided federal appeals court on Monday rejected claims by Detroit retirees that their pensions were unfairly cut to help the city end the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, Reuters reported today. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati said that restoring the pension cuts would "unavoidably" unravel Detroit's reorganization plan, which helped the city shed $7 billion of debt and end its 17-month bankruptcy in December 2014. "The harm to the city and its dependents — employees and stakeholders, agencies and businesses, and 685,000 residents — so outweighs the harm to these appellants that granting their requested relief and unraveling the plan would be impractical, imprudent, and therefore inequitable," Circuit Judge Alice Batchelder wrote in the opinion.

The federal agency that controls more than $1 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid funding has moved to prevent nursing homes from forcing claims of elder abuse, sexual harassment and even wrongful death into the private system of justice known as arbitration, the New York Times reported today. An agency within the Health and Human Services Department yesterday issued a rule that bars any nursing home that receives federal funding from requiring that its residents resolve any disputes in arbitration, instead of court. The rule, which would affect nursing homes with 1.5 million residents, promises to deliver major new protections. The new rule on arbitration came after officials in 16 states and the District of Columbia urged the government to cut off funding to nursing homes that use the clauses, arguing that arbitration kept patterns of wrongdoing hidden from prospective residents and their families.

Though there aren’t exact figures of how many GI Bill beneficiaries were affected by the closure of ITT Technical Institutes, the Student Veterans of America, a student veteran advocacy organization, estimates that 12,500 students were using the benefits at the school last year, MarketWatch.com reported yesterday. As the company winds down — ITT filed for bankruptcy last week — and officials deal with the political fallout of the school’s closure, some of our nation’s heroes are struggling to cope. The effect of the school’s shutdown on veterans is likely of historic proportions, said Derek Fronabarger, the director of policy at Student Veterans of America. Fronabarger said his organization is receiving about 15 to 25 calls a day from veterans asking for help. At its peak last week, the number of daily calls was closer to 40, he said. Federal student loan borrowers who attended ITT at the time it closed can have their loans forgiven as long as they don’t complete their programs elsewhere. But veterans who spent some of their GI Bill eligibility, which only lasts 36 months, at ITT can’t get that money back. “If that individual took out student loans and used up their GI Bill to attend ITT Technical Institute, they are now left with no degree, little or no GI Bill left and massive student loans,” Fronabarger said. Some politicians are hoping to change that. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) first introduced a bill that would allow veterans to have their GI Bill eligibility restored in the event their school closed, shortly after the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, another major for-profit chain.

The Diocese of Stockton, Calif., yesterday announced a plan that could result in its exit out of bankruptcy more than two years after legal costs stemming from dozens of child sexual-abuse lawsuits depleted its funds, the Stockton Record reported today. Bishop Stephen E. Blaire said that the diocese, which filed for bankruptcy in January 2014, negotiated with all the parties involved to reach a consensual plan, which includes:

- $15 million to survivors of sexual abuse and a trust for the benefit of survivors.

- Payment of at least 50 percent of what is owed to unsecured creditors.

- Restructuring of unsecured loans.

Funding from the plan will come from the Diocese of Stockton, settling insurance carriers and other entities associated with the diocese. The $15 million settlement agreed upon by the diocese, the plaintiffs' attorneys and insurance companies is to “provide for the healing of the survivors,” Blaire said. The diocese is responsible for $9.89 million of the total amount.