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Swiss banks that seek to avoid prosecution for fostering tax evasion through secret accounts held by U.S. clients face penalties of as much as 50 percent of the value of those assets, the U.S. government said, Bloomberg News reported Friday. Hundreds of Swiss banks could be covered by a U.S./Switzerland accord over how to punish financial institutions that used secret accounts to help American clients hide assets from U.S. tax authorities. The U.S. said that it will continue criminal probes of 14 banks while allowing others to avoid prosecution by paying penalties and disclosing accounts. “This program will significantly enhance the Justice Department’s ongoing efforts to aggressively pursue those who attempt to evade the law,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement. “The program’s requirement that Swiss banks provide detailed account information will improve our ability to bring tax dollars back to the U.S. Treasury.” Under the accord, banks that seek to avoid prosecution must pay penalties, disclose their cross-border activities, give detailed account information for U.S. clients, describe other banks that received secret accounts, and cooperate in requests for information under a U.S.-Swiss tax treaty.

Irish Bank Resolution Corp. of Dublin, formerly Anglo Irish Bank Corp., filed a chapter 15 bankruptcy petition in Delaware yesterday to protect U.S. holdings, listing more than $1 billion each in assets and debt, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Ireland’s government put the nationalized lender Irish Bank Resolution Corp. into liquidation in February under a plan to restructure its 34.7 billion-euro ($46.3 billion) bailout. The previous administration gave the bank through 2020 to wind down. The bank was seized by the state in January 2009 as its bad loans soared following the collapse of the nation’s real estate market. Its remaining loans were valued at 16.6 billion euros in June 2012, excluding 10.9 billion euros of provisions for future losses, according to its most recent set of public accounts. Its peak loan book stood at over 70 billion euros in 2008.

Indebted Spanish media company Promotora de Informaciones SA has weighed filing for chapter 11 protection in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported today. The possible move by Prisa, as the company is known, comes as it seeks to refinance about $3 billion of debt. It is unclear whether a chapter 11 filing is still under serious discussion or when a final decision will be made. Prisa, owner of the influential El País newspaper, is racking up losses amid a challenging climate for media companies in Europe and elsewhere, high financing expenses for the company and a sluggish Spanish economy.

Bankruptcy Judge Shelley C. Chapman has granted shipping company STX Pan Ocean Co. chapter 15 protection from creditors, a key ruling in the South Korean firm's bid to reorganize it business, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Judge Chapman's decision recognizes STX's South Korean bankruptcy case as the main, or controlling proceeding, and extends key U.S. bankruptcy protections to the company's business operations. Those protections include the extension of the automatic stay to STX's fleet of 371 company-owned vessels.

A pair of Cayman Islands-based hedge funds managed by ICP Asset Management LLC is seeking bankruptcy protection in the U.S., Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Thomas C. Priore, a former Harvard quarterback who ran ICP Asset Management, is now accused of defrauding clients who had invested in collateralized debt obligations. The liquidators winding down the offshore funds—ICP Strategic Credit Income Fund Ltd. and ICP Strategic Credit Income Master Fund Ltd.—put the companies into chapter 15 protection yesterday.

Big European banks may be required to raise billions of euros in new capital, making them less risky but potentially putting them at a disadvantage to their American rivals, under guidelines issued yesterday by an organization that coordinates global bank regulation, New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which includes regulators from the United States, Europe, Japan and other major economies, issued a revised proposal yesterday on how banks should calculate their leverage ratios. If put into force, the new rules would probably fall hardest on large European institutions like Deutsche Bank and Barclays, which tend to use a high proportion of borrowed money to do business or have large portfolios of derivatives. American banks have faced controls on leverage for decades, while most European banks have not.

Mexican telecommunications company Maxcom said yesterday that it was seeking to negotiate new capital and a restructuring through pre-packaged bankruptcy process in U.S. courts, Reuters reported yesterday. The company, which provides phone, Internet and television services, said that it was working on the bankruptcy plan with some of its creditors, shareholders and private equity firm Ventura Capital Privado. Separately, Maxcom said that it had failed to pay about $11 million in interest due on Monday on notes expiring in 2014.

Ten years after its spectacular collapse in an accounting scandal, reborn Italian dairy firm Parmalat is still struggling to free itself from legal disputes that are clouding both its prospects and those of its new French owner, Reuters reported yesterday. In March, a local court put Parmalat under the oversight of a special commissioner as part of an investigation into its purchase of a business from its majority owner Lactalis—a deal that helped Lactalis to cut its debt, but which some minority investors say was overpriced and makes little strategic sense. Parmalat may also have to fork out millions of euros to retain ownership of a Rome-based dairy firm it acquired in 1998, after a Roman court declared the purchase invalid. That ruling forced Parmalat to take hefty provisions, slash its dividend and push back the approval of its 2012 accounts to Friday—when minority investors are expected to vent their displeasure at a shareholder meeting.

A federal appeals court has resolved a split among judges in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan that could help determine when recognition as a foreign main proceeding should be granted in chapter 15 bankruptcy petitions, Reuters reported today. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also helped clarify that liquidators of investment funds chartered offshore will not be precluded from U.S. courts under chapter 15. The ruling determined that judges should look to the location of a company's "center of main interests" at the time of its chapter 15 petition to determine if it qualifies for recognition as a foreign main proceeding by U.S. courts. Yesterday's ruling by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, Judge Ralph Winter and District Court Judge Laura Swain stems from a dispute involving Fairfield Sentry, which was the largest feeder fund for Bernard Madoff. The Fairfield Sentry fund had channeled more than $7 billion to Madoff by the time he was arrested on Dec. 11, 2008, and his massive Ponzi scheme was exposed. After the Madoff fraud was revealed, Fairfield Sentry halted redemptions and eventually entered liquidation in July 2009 in the British Virgin Islands, where it was chartered. The firm's investment manager, Fairfield Greenwich Group, had carried out the fund's daily business and was located in New York.

Banks are lobbying against international plans to tighten rules on securitization claiming they will tie up capital and starve the economy of credit, Bloomberg News reported today. Credit Suisse Group AG, BNP Paribas SA and Deutsche Bank AG are among lenders that have written to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in Switzerland to voice concern about reforms to be implemented from 2014. Regulators are overhauling the rules after the widespread use of the technique in the U.S. mortgage market contributed to the financial crisis by spreading risk from lenders to the "shadow banking" sector. The firms say that the plans, which will force banks to hold more capital against any tranche they keep, would make transactions prohibitively expensive. In recent months, banks have begun to look again at securitizations as a way of meeting the higher capital targets—without cutting lending or raising fresh equity. The committee at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel will carry out an impact study of the securitization proposals in the coming weeks, said Bill Coen, the group’s deputy secretary general. The plans are likely to be on the agenda for the June meeting, he said.