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UBS AG, Switzerland’s biggest bank, must pay about 1.4 billion Swiss francs ($1.5 billion) to U.S., U.K. and Swiss regulators for trying to rig global interest rates, triple the penalties levied against Barclays Plc., Bloomberg News reported today. Fines from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice total $1.2 billion, UBS said. It will pay 160 million pounds ($260 million) to the U.K. Financial Services Authority, the largest- ever fine imposed by the regulator, and disgorge 59 million francs in estimated profits to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. Global authorities are investigating claims that more than a dozen banks altered submissions used to set benchmarks such as the London interbank offered rate (Libor) to profit from bets on interest-rate derivatives or make the lenders' finances appear healthier.

Vitro SAB, Mexico's largest glassmaker, filed a lawsuit seeking damages of as much as $1.6 billion from bondholders including U.S. hedge funds that shunned the company's restructuring plan and tried to force it into involuntary bankruptcy in Mexico, Bloomberg reported today. Under the company's restructuring, approved by a Mexican court in February and subsequently rejected by U.S. courts, a trust holds newly issued bonds and payments for bondholders not accepting the plan. Vitro will seek to collect damages from the trust related to efforts by dissident bondholders to put the company and 17 units into involuntary bankruptcy in Mexico, the company said in a filing yesterday to the Mexican stock exchange. The glassmaker also said the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted temporary restraining orders that suspended bondholders' efforts to collect on judgments against Vitro and its units in the U.S. A three-judge panel of the appeals court last month affirmed a June ruling by a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Dallas who refused to enforce Vitro's restructuring plan.

Robert Glickman, former CEO of the largest Chicago bank to fail since the onset of the financial crisis, has escaped a personal financial reckoning for his role in Corus Bank's demise, but that may change soon, Crain's Chicago Business reported today. Glickman, whose extraordinarily outsized bet on the national luxury condominium market backfired in the housing bust, is battling litigation brought by the trustee in the bankruptcy of holding company Corus Bankshares Inc. In the complaint filed last June, trustee Salvatore Barbatano accused Glickman of concealing the true financial condition of Corus in 2007, long after the housing-market weakness threatening the bank had become clear, and securing board approval of hefty dividends, including a special $1-per-share payout that put tens of millions in his family's pockets. The legal challenge makes Glickman, whose family owned nearly half the stock of Corus as he quadrupled the bank's size to nearly $10 billion in 2006 from $2.5 billion in 2002, the latest former chief of a failed local bank to risk having to cough up millions in big bank payouts.

The U.S. Justice Department is asking a judge to throw out Aletheia Research and Management Inc.'s bankruptcy case, saying that the state of California's decision earlier this year to suspend the company's corporate powers makes it ineligible for chapter 11 protection, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review Small Cap reported yesterday. In papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles, the U.S. Trustee Peter C. Anderson said that a "suspended corporation cannot properly conduct business, initiate legal proceedings, and initiate a chapter 11 bankruptcy petition." California suspended Santa Monica-based Aletheia's corporate status in October as a result of its failure to pay its 2008 income taxes and penalties for 2020, 2011 and 2012 for late-filed returns. If the court declines to throw out the chapter 11 case, the trustee asked that a chapter 11 trustee be appointed to manage the company during the proceedings in light of the "sustained and continuing" decline of the company's assets under management and "loss of confidence by investors" "before the company's business deteriorates to the point that it can't be saved. A court hearing on the trustee's request is set for Jan. 15. Aletheia Chief Executive Peter J. Eichler Jr. put the company into chapter 11 protection last month to help it cope with the legal battles that have caused clients to take nearly $6 billion out of the firm, which provides advice and management services to securities investors.

Liquidating discount retailer Daffy's Inc. says it needs to immediately tap a fresh $12 million loan in order to complete the sale of its real estate assets and repay its creditors, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review Small Cap reported yesterday. The company, which once operated 19 stores in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, says it is running out of money to pay its expenses and stay in line with its existing loans. Lacking "sufficient liquid funds," it is seeking court permission to access a new bankruptcy loan from Jericho Acquisitions I LLC, an affiliate of Manhattan-based developer JEMB Realty Corp. and the purchaser of Daffy's real estate assets under a deal negotiated before its August bankruptcy filing. A judge previously cleared Daffy's to tap a $10 million bankruptcy loan from Wells Fargo; that loan and others from the bank are set to mature Dec. 24. The deal with Jericho includes a cash payment of up to $46 million for Daffy's in exchange for certain of its store leases and intellectual property, according to court papers. A judge is set to consider Daffy's financing request at a hearing Dec. 17. Daffy's sought chapter 11 protection on Aug. 1.

Capitol Bancorp Ltd.'s deal for a $50 million equity investment from ValStone Partners LLC has collapsed, severing a key component of the bank-holding company's reorganization plan, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review Small Cap reported yesterday. The Michigan company said in a regulatory filing last week that affiliates of private-equity firm ValStone terminated their agreement to buy 1.75 million shares of Capitol Bancorp's Class B common stock for $35 million and 15,000 shares of Capitol Bancorp's Series A preferred stock for $15 million. The would-be purchaser had the right to back out of the deal at any time before its due-diligence period expired on Nov. 30, Capitol Bancorp said. The private-equity firm ended up terminating the deal on the deadline. As part of its agreement with ValStone, Capitol Bancorp agreed to reimburse the investor for its due-diligence costs—a payment that required the approval of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. But Capitol Bancorp received several denials from the FDIC for the reimbursement. While Capitol Bancorp said in bankruptcy-court papers late last month that it had ultimately reached an agreement with the FDIC on Nov. 21, the company said in the regulatory filing that ValStone's diligence review was never performed. Capitol Bancorp filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in August with a plan to restructure by swapping $158.1 million in debt for equity in the reorganized company.

The U.S. Treasury is selling its remaining stake in insurer American International Group Inc., bringing an end to government ownership of the company about four years after a $182 billion bailout, Reuters reported today. The sale will close the chapter on one of the most politically contentious government rescues of the global financial crisis and turn a profit for taxpayers, which was once thought to be inconceivable. At one point, the government estimated that it would never recover all of the bailout money, but as AIG restructured and returned to viability, it was able to repay the entire rescue fund plus generate a profit for U.S. taxpayers. "No taxpayer should be pleased that the government had to rescue this company, but all taxpayers should be pleased with today's announcement, ending the largest of the government's financial industry bail-outs with a profit to the Treasury Department," said Jim Millstein, the Treasury's former chief restructuring officer. AIG was rescued just before it would have been forced to file for bankruptcy protection in September 2008 as losses on risky derivatives mounted. It was bailed out as the world's financial system stood at the brink of disaster, shortly after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America Corp. The Treasury said Monday that it launched an underwritten public offering for AIG's remaining 234.2 million shares of common stock. The Treasury shares were priced at $32.50, which represents a 2.6 percent discount to AIG's Monday close of $33.36; it is estimated that the sale will raise $7.61 billion.

Wanxiang Group, a large Chinese auto parts maker, won a high-stakes auction on Sunday for assets of A123 Systems, the bankrupt American battery maker that was a centerpiece of the Obama administration's loan program for electric vehicles, the New York Times reported Sunday. A123, which filed for bankruptcy in October after chronic losses and a damaging battery recall, said Wanxiang agreed to pay $256 million for its automotive and commercial operations, including its three factories in the United States. But the sale excludes A123's business with the U.S. government and its military contracts. That portion of the company will be sold to a small energy company based in Illinois, Navitas Systems, for $2.2 million, in order to quell concerns about transferring sensitive military technology to the Chinese. The deal, which requires approval of a U.S. bankruptcy judge, would expand Wanxiang's share of the global market for lithium-ion batteries used in new electric cars like the Fisker Karma. In addition to the approval of the bankruptcy judge, the deal requires the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a broad-based group led by the Treasury Department that reviews foreign takeovers of American companies. A123, which is based in Waltham, Mass., was once one of the most promising recipients of federal loans under the Obama administration's $2 billion program to stimulate the electric-car industry in the United States. But consumers have been slow to buy electric vehicles in large numbers, crippling any chance for A123 to make a profit. It also stumbled when its first big shipment of batteries to Fisker proved defective and needed to be recalled.

Fisker Automotive Inc., the cash-strapped maker of a battery-powered sports car, recruited investment bank Evercore Partners Inc. to find potential partners or investors, the company's chief executive said on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal blog. The Anaheim, Calif.-based car company hired Evercore earlier this year when it became clear that the company needed a partnership with another automaker to lower production costs and shore up its finances. Fisker's search for new capital could result in the sale of the company. Evercore, which is known for advising companies like General Motors Co. through bankruptcy restructuring, wasn't hired to chart a course for a chapter 11 filing for Fisker, but rather to seek out possible buyers and investors. The company's board has reviewed the option of seeking bankruptcy protection after a series of setbacks that led Fisker to halt production of its $110,000 Karma sports car in July. Fisker is seeking investors primarily in China and parts of Europe, where company executives believe there is stronger interest in electric cars than in the U.S.

Struggling Ampal-American Israel Corp. filed a bankruptcy-exit plan that gives frustrated bondholders an ownership stake in the reorganized foreign energy and transportation investment company but also protects the shares held by Chief Executive Yosef Maiman, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. Ampal-American's plan proposes to split 20 percent of the company's Class A stock and 184,651 shares of "voting preference common stock" among bondholders owed about $233 million and other unsecured creditors. At a hearing Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, Judge Stuart Bernstein gave the company's committee of unsecured creditors 10 days to file a competing plan. Both plans will be discussed at a Dec. 20 hearing. In earlier court papers, bondholders had argued that the court should either appoint a chapter 11 trustee or end the company's exclusive right to file a bankruptcy-exit plan so that they could propose their own.