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September 22, 2006
Airlines
id='1'>Workers Say Talks with Northwest Are at an
Impasse
Flight attendants at Northwest
Airlines Corp. said that their talks are at an impasse and asked to be
released from further negotiations with the airline, one more step
toward a potential strike the union has been pushing for since last
month, the Associated Press reported yesterday. By asking the National
Mediation Board to declare an impasse, flight attendants put their
attempt to strike onto a second track after a federal judge blocked the
first one. If the board agrees that more talks are pointless, it could
start a 30-day clock ticking toward a strike. No talks have taken place
recently. The union planned random, unannounced walkouts after Northwest
imposed pay cuts and work rule changes on July 31. But a federal judge
blocked the walkouts, saying flight attendants first need to run through
the negotiations and mediation required by the Railway Labor Act, which
governs unionized airline labor.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Northwest-Flight-Attendants.html?pagewanted=print'>Read
more.
id='2'>Pan Am Ex-Workers to Begin Receiving Settlement Payments in
December
More than 15,000 former
Pan American World Airways employees can expect to start receiving
payments in December after a bankruptcy judge earlier this summer
ordered the distributions to be made from a settlement reached with the
Libyan government in 2003, the Associated Press reported today. The
defunct Pan Am, which started in 1927 and helped create the airline
industry, shut down on Dec. 4, 1991, after declaring bankruptcy in
January of that year. Among the last, fatal blows it suffered was the
1988 bombing of Flight 103, a now infamous attack that ended with 270
dead when a bomb exploded on board as the plane flew over
size='3'>Lockerbie
size='3'>Scotland
size='3'>. In 2003,
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Libya
size='3'>accepted responsibility for the bombing and agreed to pay
restitution to the victims. Pan Am's payments come from a separate
settlement of a lawsuit its insurers brought against the Libyan
government. A federal bankruptcy judge authorized Pan Am Corp. to
distribute the money from the settlement earlier this summer.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Pan-Am-Payout.html?pagewanted=print'>Read
more.
w:st='on'>
id='3'>Washington
w:st='on'>
size='3'> State
face='Times New Roman' size='3'> Warns Homeowners about Foreclosure
'Rescue' Scams
As rising interest rates
and growing consumer debt push more families into financial trouble,
consumer advocates and Washington state investigators are alerting
people on the brink of foreclosure to an increasing number scams aimed
at squeezing them out of their homes, the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer reported yesterday.
Foreclosure-rescue scams are on the rise as 'a collision of events'
force more people into foreclosure, said Chuck Cross, division director
of the Washington Department of Financial Institutions, which
investigates such fraud. The scams typically involve an individual or
company offering to pay off the struggling homeowner's mortgage. In
exchange, the homeowner transfers ownership and leases the home.
Typically, the lease payments are higher than the homeowner can afford
and the price to buy back the home is often $50,000 to $100,000 more
than its value, Cross said.
href='http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/285940_mortgagescam21.html'>Read
more.
id='4'>SeraCare Modifies Chapter 11 Plan amid Rival
Bids
SeraCare Life Sciences
Inc. has sought court approval to modify its chapter 11 exit funding
strategy, hoping that the changes will enable it to retain control over
its bankruptcy case,
size='3'>Portfolio Media reported yesterday.
SeraCare revealed on Thursday that it intends to issue $25 million in
unsecured, rather than secured, notes to repay its senior secured debt
as part of its revised plan. Two weeks ago, the health care company lost
exclusive control over its chapter 11 case after a judge in the U.S.
Bankruptcy Court in
w:st='on'>San
Diego
to file their own reorganization plan. In the aftermath, SeraCare has
submitted a revamped proposal that would give a slew of investors,
including Cohanzick Management LLC, Robeco Investment Management,
Fairfield Greenwich Group, and Foxhill Capital Partners LLC, a chance to
switch the unsecured notes for convertible secured notes. Both sets of
notes would mature in 60 months and bear interest at 9 percent a year,
according to the biopharmaceutical company.
id='5'>American Business Financial Services Inc.’s Trustee
Sues for $70 Million
The chapter 7 trustee in
American Business Financial Services Inc.’s bankruptcy case has
filed a lawsuit seeking more than $70 million from six defendants who
allegedly defrauded the company’s estate after it filed for
bankruptcy protection in January 2005, Portfolio
Media reported yesterday. The suit brought by
chapter 7 trustee George L. Miller names Greenwich Capital Financial
Products Inc., Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC, Wells Fargo Bank N.A., Law
Debenture Trust Company of
w:st='on'>New
York
Group LP and Michael W. Trickey as defendants. Miller’s complaint
called into question the debtor-in-possession (DIP) loan arrangement
entered into by American Business Financial and Greenwich Capital. Under
that arrangement, Greenwich Capital agreed to provide a $500 million DIP
financing facility in return for a fee of $15.75 million, according to
the complaint. Miller contends. Greenwich Capital collected the $15.75
million and advanced less than $30 million before calling the loan, the
complaint alleges.
between GM, Renault and Nissan Begin to Sputter
After two months of
exploratory talks, General Motors Corp., Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co.
have made little progress toward a grand alliance, the
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>Wall Street Journal
size='3'>reported today. The slow progress comes ahead of a meeting
expected next week in
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Paris
Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner and Carlos Ghosn, head of
Renault and Nissan. Teams from the companies studying the possible
benefits of a three-way alliance are supposed to deliver their findings
by Oct. 15. From there, the companies could decide to do further
studies, start working toward a deal or drop the idea
altogether.
href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115887046776270449.html?mod=home_whats_news_us'>Read
more. (Registration required.)
id='7'>Crash of Hedge Fund Resonates over
w:st='on'>
Diego
System
Questions are mounting
over whether the
w:st='on'>San
Diego
size='3'>County
pension system is too heavily invested in risk-taking hedge funds, days
after suffering a multimillion-dollar loss from the precipitous crash of
one such fund, the San Diego
Union-Tribune reported today. Bad investments
in natural gas, made by one trader at the Connecticut-based Amaranth
Advisors LLC, could cost the pension system an estimated $45
million. Amaranth initially disclosed Monday that its fund
was down by about 35 percent, but in a letter to investors late
Wednesday, it estimated month-to-date losses at 65 percent.
w:st='on'>
size='3'>County
beginning to receive questions as to why 20 percent of the $7.7 billion
pension fund's investments are in hedge funds, and whether that's too
much. On Sept. 1, 2005, the retirement association invested $175 million
href='http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20060922-9999-1n22invest.html'>Read
more.
id='8'>Poseidon Pools Bankruptcy Converted to Chapter
7
Poseidon Pools, which
filed for chapter 11 last October, had its case converted to chapter 7
yesterday,
size='3'>Newsday reported today. At the time
of its filing last year, Poseidon Pools listed assets of nearly $541,500
and $3.9 million in debt, according to court documents. On Sept. 5, the
business was put under the control of a court-appointed trustee.
size='3'>Suffolk County
size='3'>N.Y.
it has nearly a dozen complaints pending against Poseidon, including at
least four from customers who said they paid between $1,500 and $5,500
each in deposits and fees for undelivered hot tubs. The county revoked
Poseidon Pool's home improvement license on Sept. 8 and fined it $1,500
for 'willfully abandoning a written contract and using an unlicensed
salesperson.'
href='http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzpools0922,0,6458303,print.story?coll=ny-business-leadheadlines'>Read
more.
International
id='9'>Inquiry of Bawag’s Role in Refco Collapse Expands to
KPMG Austria's Staff
The investigation by
Austrian prosecutors of more than $2 billion in losses at Bawag P.S.K.
Group, the Vienna bank at the center of the Refco Inc. scandal, has
expanded to the roles played by employees of the bank's auditor, KPMG
Austria GmbH, the Wall
Street Journal reported yesterday. Refco, a
commodities brokerage firm, last year disclosed that its CEO, Phillip R.
Bennett, allegedly had helped to hide bad debt. That revelation
ultimately led Refco to file for bankruptcy protection and to the
discovery that Bawag had played a key role in the alleged debt scheme.
More recently, prosecutors have focused on how Bawag reported assets and
losses. At the center of the investigation are the KPMG audits of the
bank between 1994 and 2005 that failed to reveal misreporting of bank
assets and losses. Witnesses have told prosecutors that Robert Reiter, a
former partner and head of the accounting firm's Austrian auditing
subsidiary, KPMG Alpen-Treuhand GmbH, allegedly advised the bank on how
to book hundreds of millions of dollars in losses so they wouldn't be
visible to public scrutiny.
size='3'>
href='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115877803929169131-search.html?KEYWORDS=bankruptcy&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month'>Read
more. (Registration required.)
id='10'>Australia's ITSA Releases Consumer Bankruptcy
Findings
The Insolvency and
Trustee Service of Australia (ITSA) reported yesterday that 20 percent
of bankrupt Australians are under the age of 30, 28 percent are aged
between 30 and 39, and 52 percent are older than 40, the
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>Australian
size='3'>reported today. The ITSA survey
showed 47 percent of bankrupts are single and with no children, 20
percent are couples with children, 18 percent are couples without
children and 15 percent are single parents. In terms of the occupations,
unemployed people account for 29 percent of bankruptcies, followed by
intermediate clerical, sales and service workers, who make up 11
percent.
href='http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20457086-31037,00.html'>Read
more.
href='http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20457086-31037,00.html'>