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Aéropostale Inc.’s doors remain open as back-to-school shoppers hit the stores, but there is no guarantee the company will survive for long, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A planned auction of the massive store chain has been pushed back to Aug. 29 as a bankruptcy judge weighs what could be a company-ending decision for the international seller of apparel to young adults. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane is set to rule later this week on a dispute between Aéropostale and the private-equity firm that was at one time one of its largest backers, Sycamore Partners. Junior creditors and the company are allied in a campaign to save Aéropostale, avoiding the “loss of over 10,000 jobs, empty lease locations and disappointment for vendors,” creditor attorney Robert Feinstein said at a hearing yesterday in New York bankruptcy court. Aéropostale is pressing for a ruling that would rein in Sycamore’s power to determine the company’s fate. Sycamore contends liquidation, not a sale of the operating business at a bargain-basement price, is the best option for creditors.

The bankrupt operating unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp. asked a judge yesterday to extend a lawsuit shield for its parent company, which a financial advisor said is critical to making progress toward a settlement with holdout creditors, Reuters reported. Negotiations are advancing thanks to the prospect of more cash for creditors following the $4.4 billion sale of another Caesars affiliate last month and the possibility of financial contributions from Caesars' private equity sponsors, Brendan Hayes, managing director of Millstein & Co said at a hearing. But negotiations need to take place without the threat of judgments on bondholder litigation currently pending in New York and Delaware against the non-bankrupt Caesars parent, Hayes said. Parties in the long and litigious $18 billion bankruptcy met in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago as Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc. requested a third halt to $11.4 billion in lawsuits by noteholders against its parent over bond guarantees. A current injunction expires on Aug. 29.

Gawker Media Group’s new owner, Univision Communications Inc., would pay Gawker’s founder $16,666 a month for the next two years in exchange for a promise not to work for the gossip site’s rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Nick Denton would be paid about $400,000 by Univision, according to a noncompete pact filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The Spanish-language broadcaster last week won a bankruptcy auction for Gawker with a $135 million bid, and then said that it was shutting down the site. The company insisted on the noncompete agreement with Denton, who earned $500,000 a year at Gawker, as a condition of the sale.

Calvert Retail, a Delaware company that owns eight kitchenwares stores, could become the new owner of Chapel Hill’s (N.C.) struggling Southern Season as soon as today, the Charlotte (N.C.) News & Observer reported today. The company was the sole bidder at a bankruptcy sale on Friday morning with a $3.5 million bid. A bankruptcy judge approved the sale Friday afternoon and the deal is being expedited to close today. “We are very close to zero cash. We don’t have enough cash to operate next week if this doesn’t close,” said John Fioretti, the court approved chief restructuring officer for Southern Season. Southern Season was started in 1975 and eventually became a $30 million retail and mail order business and an anchor tenant at Chapel Hill’s University Place mall. However, it never recovered after the 2008 recession and was bought in 2011 by TC Capital Fund, which is led by Chapel Hill entrepreneur Clay Hamner.

Life Partners customers who invested in roughly 3,400 life-insurance policies must decide by today between two competing plans from life-settlement firms Vida Capital Inc. and BroadRiver Asset Management, which are fighting to manage the lucrative Life Partners $2.3 billion portfolio, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The plans offer an array of payout scenarios and fees explained in more than a thousand pages of dense legal language. A bankruptcy judge approved the wording earlier this year. Federal bankruptcy rules require that plans sent to creditors be written in simple language. But a Wall Street trader who specializes in distressed trading said he can’t tell what recovery rates would be under the different scenarios. Through Life Partners, a life-insurance policyholder sold his or her policy at a discount to an investor for immediate cash. Life Partners brokered the transactions for a fee. Buyers of the policies continued paying the premiums hoping to get a profit when the insured person dies and the policy pays out. Many Life Partners customers said in interviews that lacking clarity before Monday’s voting deadline, they don’t know whom to trust. In written statements and at meetings each group held in Florida, California and other states, Vida Capital and BroadRiver accused each other of trying to disguise unreasonable customer fees. The firms jointly published a 30-page comparison chart in which each presented cost data using metrics that were different from the other’s.

A St. Louis bankruptcy court judge has approved the sale of a Noranda Aluminum Holding Corp. division to a Swedish buyer, Gränges, for more than $320 million, the Nashville Business Journal reported today. The Franklin, Tenn.-based company filed for chapter 11 protection in February. Gränges will acquire Noranda’s flat-rolled products group involving about 550 workers.

Hunt Consolidated Inc. is back in the chase after Oncor, Energy Future Holding Corp.’s regulated electricity transmissions business, which is slated to be sold to Florida’s NextEra Energy Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Last month, NextEra emerged as the winner of a competition for Oncor that was touched off when Texas regulators scuttled a takeover proposal led by Hunt. Now, Hunt is trying to put its Oncor deal back together on terms that would ease regulatory approval if the NextEra deal doesn’t prevail, according to a letter from a key Texas regulatory executive describing that potential deal. Dead in May, the Hunt deal could be revived if investors back a new effort, one that would be based on an agreement to share tax advantages with ratepayers.

Rules for September auctions that promise to add $224 million or more to the coffers of bankrupt solar power developer SunEdison Inc. won approval from Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Judge Bernstein signed off on the bidding rules for two parcels of alternative energy projects SunEdison was developing when it foundered amid legal and financial trouble and landed in bankruptcy at a hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Company lawyers have said that they’re still pondering a reorganization of the beleaguered company, which faces federal investigations into its financial affairs and multiple lawsuits. Meanwhile, SunEdison has put the alternative-energy projects that were in the pipeline at the time of its April bankruptcy petition on the auction block. Read more. (Subscription required.)

In related news, Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein held off ruling on whether Vivint Solar Inc. can proceed with its $1 billion lawsuit over a failed merger with bankrupt SunEdison Inc. because the two companies can’t agree on a timetable for the litigation, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Judge Bernstein ended a hearing yesterday without deciding whether to lift the “automatic stay” that shields bankrupt companies like SunEdison from lawsuits. SunEdison has said that while the dispute needs to be worked out, it’s too early in the chapter 11 process to litigate the claim. Steven Schatz, a lawyer for Vivint, told the judge the two sides were still haggling over how soon a trial might occur. The suit itself is in Delaware Chancery Court. “We thought we were close,” he told Bernstein. “Frankly, at best, we’re no closer. Maybe further apart.” Bernstein could issue a ruling in a court filing later. Read more. 

Bankruptcy Judge Barry Schermer said that he will allow the bankruptcy sale of Noranda Aluminum’s foil business to Granges AB, a Swedish supplier of rolled aluminum products, the St. Louis Business Journal reported yesterday. Granges, according to the Wall Street Journal, will buy the company for $309.7 million. Noranda’s unsecured creditors will receive $7.5 million of the sale proceeds. The unsecured creditors will also receive 10 percent of the sale of Noranda’s “primary aluminum” business, which includes the now shuttered smelter in New Madrid, Mo., and bauxite mines in St. Ann, Jamaica, and a refinery in Gramercy, La.