It was payday, and Shawn Hannold's bank account was empty. A phone call from a coworker alerted Hannold the paychecks hadn't shown up in the accounts that morning.

Hannold, who needed the money for child support payments, made a beeline into his head office. There, he was told the company was going bankrupt, and that no one was getting paid. Ever.

On Jan. 25 of this year, Nippon NCB Co. Ltd., once the 10th largest English school chain in Japan in terms of student enrollment, and which operated the chain of NCB (Network of Creative Brains) language schools, NCB computer schools, ASP International (As Soon Possible, an employment dispatch service) and ICC (International Communication College, focusing on business English services), declared bankruptcy.