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Hedge fund Standard General has raised its bid to buy about 1,740 stores of bankrupt electronics retailer RadioShack Corp. in a court-supervised auction, which entered its second day yesterday, Reuters reported. Standard General, which would operate most of the stores in conjunction with Sprint Corp., increased its initial $145 million bid by at least $20 million, according to one of the sources. It also committed to keeping some 7,500 RadioShack jobs. Liquidators who proposed closing the stores and selling the inventory and fixtures also made a bid. The result of the private auction, taking place at the New York offices of the Jones Day law firm, must be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. A hearing has been scheduled for Thursday at 9:30 a.m.

The RadioShack auction moves into a second day today in New York, as the company and its creditors debate the value of the bid from big lender Standard General LP, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Standard General’s takeover proposal would keep the iconic retailer in operation, in trimmed-down form, and estimates are that it’s worth at least $20 million more than a potential counterbid from a joint venture of liquidators. The problem for RadioShack is that Standard General is bidding mostly by offering to cancel loans it made to the company, and creditors have questioned the validity of those loans. What’s hanging up the auction is not a profound legal debate over the fine points of lending to failing companies — it’s timing. Unsecured creditors owed an estimated $500 million have until approximately the second week in April to decide whether they want to sue Standard General to challenge the loans. Given the load of senior debt on the company, those creditors may get little or nothing out of the auction, and can’t afford to walk away from a potentially viable lawsuit. RadioShack needs a sale by March 31 to avoid running up another month’s worth of rent payments. Standard General says it won’t close a takeover deal until its RadioShack loans are recognized as valid.

Controversial real estate developer and restaurateur James McGown, known for bankrupting his way through the Big Apple, is offering 13 Brooklyn, N.Y., properties in a pre-foreclosure real estate auction set for March 27, Crain’s New York Business reported yesterday. Among those up for sale is 320 Court St., which currently houses McGown’s Buschenschank beer garden. Other properties included in the auction are Brooklyn’s 555 Union St. and 557 Union St., as well as 65 4th Ave., which is the site of McGown’s Cherry Tree Bar. McGown gained notoriety in 2010 for owning a basement condo in TriBeCa described by tabloids as a "sex cave." He has filed more than a half-dozen bankruptcy petitions in the past six years for businesses including South Brooklyn Pizza. The auction will be conducted by East River Mortgage Corp., a real estate entity owned by McGown that filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012.

Atlantic City’s Revel Casino Hotel yesterday asked a bankruptcy judge for more breathing room in a bid to move forward with a sale after the judge said she couldn’t sign off on a heavily discounted $82 million deal to Glenn Straub, a Florida-based developer, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The judge’s decision has left the $2.4 billion resort without a clear path toward resolving its financial woes, even as millions of dollars in legal and operational expenses continue to mount. During a hearing yesterday, John Cunningham, a lawyer for Revel, mentioned several paths Revel could take, but each comes with its own set of difficult complications. One option is for Straub to buy the casino under an earlier, court-approved $95 million deal stemming from a bankruptcy auction last year, but that appears increasingly unlikely. “I’m not going to pay the 95.4,” Straub said, referring to his original $95.4 million offer. The Florida property developer failed to meet a Feb. 9 deadline to close the $95.4 million sale, after a string of 11th-hour appeals from the resort’s former tenants and other creditors muddied the terms of the deal.

A competitive auction over the future of Wet Seal Inc. ended on Thursday with Versa Capital Management LLC agreeing to take over at least 140 of the teen clothing chain's stores and sink an initial $10 million into the company's operations, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Unlike many troubled retail chains catering to young women, which are liquidating, Wet Seal entered chapter 11 protection Jan. 15 with plans to keep a slimmed-down version of the company operating. The chain closed more than 330 of its stores ahead of its bankruptcy and laid off nearly 3,700 employees. Wet Seal's initial savior was B. Riley Financial Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that agreed to take 80 percent of the equity in a reorganized Wet Seal in exchange for $25 million. But the firm lost out in a bankruptcy auction in favor of an offer from Philadelphia-based private-equity firm Versa. The Versa deal includes $7.5 million in cash slated for unsecured creditors, an agreement to pay so-called cure costs as well as administrative and priority claims, and $10 million in exit financing. Versa also agreed to take over a $20 million bankruptcy financing commitment from B. Riley and pay B. Riley a $625,000 breakup fee.

A bankruptcy judge granted a number of requests from fresh salad franchiser Saladworks LLC Wednesday, siding with the company and its majority owner and warning the feuding parties to keep their rhetoric in check, Dow Jones Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. "The rhetoric in the filings is unhelpful," said Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein, who was appointed to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., last October. "I don't want to read through 10 pages of why the other guy is wrong — not wrong, but bad — and all the things that have happened before I get to the substance of the dispute."

A bankruptcy judge will rule today on the proposed sale of Atlantic City's former Revel casino to a Florida developer for $82 million, the Associated Press reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns said yesterday that she will rule on the purchase of the $2.4 billion casino by Glenn Straub's Polo North Country Club. But a loophole in the deal still leaves the door open for owner Revel AC to accept a higher bid if one materializes before the March 31 scheduled closing date. Nineteen other would-be purchasers have expressed interest in outbidding Straub, but none has put any money on the table.

Australia’s IFM Investors has agreed to a $5.725 billion deal to operate the 157-mile toll road that runs across Indiana between the Ohio Turnpike and Chicago Skyway for the next 66 years, the Wall Street Journal reported today. “We see Indiana Toll Road as a critical component of the U.S. transport network and an asset that’s linked to U.S. GDP and CPI growth,” said Julio Garcia, IFM Investors’ head of infrastructure for North America. Garcia said that the deal would be about 43 percent debt-financed, and structured as investment-grade. Previously, the toll road was about 85 percent debt-financed in a “very aggressive financing structure that isn’t appropriate for the current environment,” he said. IFM is restricted from hiking toll rates beyond the concession’s so-called tolling mechanism, which ensures that any increases are closely tied to inflation. The 59-year-old road filed for bankruptcy last September after struggling for years with a heavy debt load and lower-than-expected traffic. A bankruptcy judge in October cleared ITR Concession Co., the operator of the toll road, to exit chapter 11 and to find a buyer to help the company pay off its debt.