All items from WSJ.com: Bankruptcy Beat

Former British business star Paul Kemsley got a thumbs-down last Friday from a New York bankruptcy judge who was asked to shield Kemsley’s U.S. assets while a court in London helps him deal with creditors.
Judge James M. Peck of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan denied a U.K. trustee’s request to shield Kemsley’s U.S. assets under Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, which would have protected Kemsley from creditor action in the U.S. pending a resolution of the U.K. proceedings.
An attorney for Mark Fry, the U.K. trustee who filed the U.S. Chapter 15 request, declined to comment on the decision. Kemsley’s attorney could not be reached for comment.
Kemsley, whom Peck called “a bankrupt who doesn’t live like one,” moved to the U.S. in 2009 after bad bets (literally, bets involving the online speculation operation Spreadex) on whether Lehman Brothers would recover from its tailspin.
His U.K. real-estate empire, Rock Investments, was swept under, and a London judge last year declared Kemsley bankrupt. The reversal of fortune cost him his role as scold on Britain’s version of “The Apprentice,” a reality TV show premised on successful business people whipping billionaire-wannabes into shape.
While his big debts and sparse assets were being sorted out in London, Kemsley had taken refuge in the U.S., where, according to Peck, he lived the lifestyle of a “sophisticated New Yorker with international connections.”

Out of bankruptcy with a new owner that allowed “The Ice Cream of the Future” to live on for another day, the unbridled Dippin’ Dots is making an ambitious bounce towards the school cafeteria with a healthier, fat-free product.
This spring, Dippin’ Dots plans to introduce its vanilla-and-chocolate YoDots line, which is made with nonfat yogurt and has only 70 calories per three-ounce pack. A five-ounce serving of the traditional Dippin’ Dots has about 10 grams of fat.
Dippin’ Dots’ network of about 120 franchised stores will begin selling cups of the mouth-tickling product first. But food engineers at the company’s Paducah, Ky., headquarters used ingredients that comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food standards for schools, enabling the company to pitch its product to most school districts across the country.
“A lot of kids love the product for the novelty, but there are still parents who are conscious for the healthier options,” Dippin’ Dots LLC President Scott Fischer told Bankruptcy Beat.

European Pressphoto Agency

Dionne Warwick

Say a little prayer for Dionne Warwick…and her bank account.
The singer filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in New Jersey last Thursday, court papers show. In Chapter 7, an individual can be discharged from certain, but not all, of her debts.
Warwick’s bankruptcy attorney told Rolling Stone that a past business manager “mismanaged” the singer’s affairs so that “before she knew it, she owed a gazillion dollars in taxes.” The attorney insists Warwick filed her taxes annually but wasn’t able to work out an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service. You can read more about Warwick’s tax troubles here.

Arnold Turner/Invision/Associated Press

In this Sept. 7, 2012 file photo, Joe Francis attends the House of Hype Music Awards at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Joe Francis and the Girls Gone Wild empire have gotten more than a few women to expose their, ahem, “alter egos.”
But the tables have turned in bankruptcy, and now it’s Joe Francis’s alter ego that creditor Steve Wynn wants exposed.
Ready for it? Joe Francis is…Girls Gone Wild, according to Steve Wynn’s company Wynn Resorts Las Vegas.