I have been doing a little bit more reading on Japanese law in this respect, and it would appear
two things are necessary to engineer an out-of-court settlement:- Form a creditors committee, and get the Tokyo court to recognize it.
- Write a a plan of liquidation and obtain creditor consensus on it.
Once these actions have been taken, then it should be possible to liquidate Mt. Gox under Japan's
special liquidation law — which is a sub-part of the Corporation Act — first published in July 2005 and went into effect on May 1, 2006.
At present, the depositors (aka "creditors") have zero representation before the court, and thus exert virtually no influence over its proceedings.
Are there any international lawyers out there up to this kind of challenge?
As far as I know, no creditor of Mt. Gox has ever hired a lawyer in Japan to become involved in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy.
This is surprising, since a lot of people lost money in Mt. Gox and some of them must have substantial assets available for legal action.
Attorney Nobuaki Kobayashi, the court appointed bankruptcy trustee, is no doubt quite serious when he says that he is evaluating alternative takeover deals such as the ones from Sunlot and BitOcean Japan. If depositors want to see a different outcome besides a takeover, then they will need to work together and should possibly be willing to fund a legal team on their own.
Edit: Note, one advantage to forming a creditor's committee could be getting, with court approval, to depose Mark Karpeles and other Mt. Gox personnel regarding the whereabouts of any "missing" Mt. Gox bitcoins and cash. Creditors generally have the right to discover assets the debtor might be hiding.