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With international professional fees for Nortel Networks Corp.'s bankruptcy topping $900 million and a multibillion-dollar court fight heating up, a U.S. judge has enlisted outside help to keep an eye on those bills, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross appointed accounting firm Master, Sidlow & Associates P.A. "to act as special consultant to the court" in looking over the bills coming in from dozens of law firms and other advisers working on Nortel's chapter 11 case. The appointment of a fee examiner comes midway through the fifth year of the massive international bankruptcy of Nortel, which was once a telecommunications giant and the pride of Canada's technology industry. Now, Nortel is a corporate shell without operations, ringed by bankruptcy professionals who are preparing for a court clash next year over $7.3 billion raised in the sale of the company's businesses and patents.

Bankrupt wireless communications firm Lightsquared Inc. plans to go to trial with its lenders over whether Dish Network chairman Charles Ergen's acquisition of big chunks of its loan debt violated an agreement pertaining to how LightSquared can restructure, Reuters reported yesterday. The trial, announced yesterday by LightSquared and its lenders after the sides said that they could not resolve the dispute consensually, escalates a battle between Ergen and Phil Falcone, head of LightSquared owner Harbinger Capital, over control of the company. The dispute centers on a February agreement between LightSquared and an informal committee of some of its lenders governing certain aspects of LightSquared's restructuring. Key provisions of the deal have been kept private by the parties. According to court papers, the deal hinged on the lender committee being LightSquared's largest creditor constituency, which ceased to be the case, LightSquared has argued, once Ergen began buying up large chunks of the debt, thus voiding the deal.

The battle over LightSquared Inc. is heating up, with Phil Falcone's hedge fund Harbinger Capital accusing satellite-television mogul Charlie Ergen of fraudulently acquiring the wireless venture company’s debt in order to take control of the company on the cheap, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a bankruptcy filing on Wednesday, Harbinger accused Ergen of using a front company to buy up nearly $1 billion in LightSquared.

Wireless broadband communications company LightSquared Inc. is splitting its proposed $3 billion senior secured exit term loan into a $2 billion first-lien loan and $1 billion second-lien tranche, Reuters reported on Wednesday. The loan originally consisted of a single tranche. The now $2 billion first-lien portion will offer coupons payable in cash and in kind. Proceeds are to fund the company's emergence from bankruptcy. Lender commitments are due on July 9.

LightSquared said that satellite mogul Charlie Ergen has been "gaming" his recent purchases of hundreds of millions of dollars of the company's debt in an effort to seize control of the wireless company's bankruptcy case, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a partially redacted court filing on Monday, lawyers for LightSquared, which is controlled by Phil Falcone's Harbinger Capital Partners, asked a bankruptcy judge to release it from the terms of a settlement it struck with its lenders.

China-based solar panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd., whose main unit is in insolvency proceedings, said it had struck a deal with a majority of its bondholders to defer payment on a $541 million loan until Aug. 30, the third time the company has reached such an agreement, Reuters reported on Friday. Suntech defaulted on a principal payment on the 3 percent convertible notes on March 15, prompting the company's Chinese lenders to drag its main manufacturing unit into insolvency proceedings. Lenders holding the senior notes will nominate two additional members to Suntech's board and will help to identify strategic and financial investors to bring in new capital, the company said in a statement on Friday. Suntech said it was also looking at converting all major debt claims held by the bondholders into equity.

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.

Micron Technologies Inc.'s planned acquisition of bankrupt Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc. appeared to move closer to completion on Friday after a key deadline passed without a legal challenge, Reuters reported on Friday. U.S. creditors had until 4 p.m. on Friday to object to the request by Elpida to have a bankruptcy issue orders that would enforce its Japanese restructuring, according to court records. At the center of the restructuring is the proposed sale to Micron for 200 billion yen (about $2.1 billion), which will create the world's second-largest maker of memory chips.

LightSquared Inc., the wireless broadband company said to have received an offer from Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charlie Ergen, won permission to hire Jefferies Group LLC to line up financing to exit bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman approved Jefferies’s hiring yesterday, also raising questions about the identities of LightSquared’s debt owners after lawyers expressed concerns that a committee of lenders may no longer be the company’s largest debt holder. Lawyers told her that as far as they know, documents giving details about the owners of the company’s debt were still accurate.

Philip Falcone's Harbinger Capital Partners hedge-fund firm plans to pay Jefferies & Co. up to $80 million in fees as part of an exit-financing commitment for bankrupt wireless-satellite venture LightSquared, a loan that the company said would pay off bondholders in full, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. LightSquared added that the exit financing, a senior secured loan with terms that will be filed confidentially with the court, "will serve as the cornerstone of a standalone plan of reorganization for LightSquared that will most likely provide for full payment to all creditors and the retention of equity interests by shareholders."