The typical way that chapter 11 bankruptcy works, in America at least, is to imagine a big wedding cake. The bottom layer in the shareholders, the next layer up is the bondholders. When the company goes bankrupt, you slice the bottom layer off the cake: the shareholders get 0, and all the bondholders become the new shareholders.
That's for chapter 11, when the business is trying to stay as an ongoing concern. Lots of businesses that are bankrupt on paper still have quite a bit going for them -- if they could escape their legacy debts, they have more money coming in than going out, and it's socially good to keep the company going. Many people keep their jobs and the creditors have the best chance of becoming as whole as possible.
Mt Gox is not going to reorganize. Like Arthur Andersen after they failed to properly audit Enron's books, whether it's their fault or not they have failed at their one primary mission and no one is going to trust them ever again in a business that makes trust paramount. They are gone, dust, over. It's hard to even imagine what pieces of their corpse would be useful to other businesses, besides gox.com which is a three-letter domain name.
IANAL, and I'm especially not a bankruptcy lawyer.
Sadly, gox.com may be a nice three-letter domain name, but you'll have to depreciate it on the same schedule you'd use for a barrel of cesium 137. Nobody is going to want a piece of that action for a long time.
That's for chapter 11, when the business is trying to stay as an ongoing concern. Lots of businesses that are bankrupt on paper still have quite a bit going for them -- if they could escape their legacy debts, they have more money coming in than going out, and it's socially good to keep the company going. Many people keep their jobs and the creditors have the best chance of becoming as whole as possible.
Mt Gox is not going to reorganize. Like Arthur Andersen after they failed to properly audit Enron's books, whether it's their fault or not they have failed at their one primary mission and no one is going to trust them ever again in a business that makes trust paramount. They are gone, dust, over. It's hard to even imagine what pieces of their corpse would be useful to other businesses, besides gox.com which is a three-letter domain name.
IANAL, and I'm especially not a bankruptcy lawyer.