Briefcase

Bankruptcy auction set for Solyndra assets

FREMONT, Calif. – The bankrupt solar company Solyndra Inc. is auctioning off surplus assets this week as part of its bankruptcy proceedings.

The online auction starts Wednesday and ends Thursday at 5 p.m.

The auction company Heritage Global Partners is handling the event. Solyndra, which received a $528 million federal loan guarantee and was touted by President Barack Obama as an example of his emphasis on so-called “green jobs,” filed for bankruptcy in September and laid off 1,000 workers.

Associated Press

Corzine’s securities firm files for bankruptcy

WASHINGTON – The European debt crisis has claimed its first big casualty on Wall Street, a securities firm run by former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.

MF Global Holdings Ltd., which Corzine has led since early last year, filed for bankruptcy protection Monday. Concerns about the company’s holdings of European debt caused its business partners to pull back last week, which led to a severe cash crunch, the company said in its filing.

Corzine, the former head of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs Group Inc., oversaw MF Global as it amassed $6 billion in debt issued by financially strapped European countries such as Italy, Spain and Portugal.

MF Global’s bankruptcy is the eighth biggest in the U.S., according to the research firm BankruptcyData.com. It’s bigger than Chrysler LLC’s in 2009 and smaller than those of financial-crisis casualties Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Washington Mutual Inc. and CIT Group Inc.

Associated Press

Old space shuttle hangar goes to Boeing in deal

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Boeing is taking over one of NASA’s old space shuttle hangars to build a new capsule that the company hopes will lift astronauts to orbit in four or five years.

More than 100 Boeing, NASA and state and federal officials gathered in the massive empty hangar – Orbiting Processing Facility No. 3 – for the announcement of the first-of-its-kind agreement allowing a private company to take over the government property.

The aerospace company expects to create 550 high-tech jobs at Kennedy Space Center over the next four years, 140 of them by the end of next year. NASA is counting on companies like Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and others to ferry cargo and astronauts to and from the International Space Station in three to five years. Until then, the space agency will continue to shell out tens of millions of dollars per seat on Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Associated Press