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The unraveling of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. could unlock one of the company’s strongest businesses: the Buybuy Baby chain of stores selling strollers, cribs and other infant gear, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bed Bath, which is preparing for a bankruptcy filing, has been in discussions with private-equity firm Sycamore Partners and another suitor about a deal to sell the baby chain as part of its chapter 11 restructuring. While sales at both chains are shrinking, the smaller baby business has held up better than the home goods chain. The company is still opening new Buybuy Baby stores, even as it closes 150 of its namesake locations and moves to preserve cash. As of February 2022, the company had about 770 Bed Bath & Beyond stores and about 130 Buybuy Baby locations. The Buybuy Baby business has drawn more interest than the core Bed Bath & Beyond business, the people said, and some discussions with potential suitors have centered around keeping the Buybuy Baby locations intact while determining another path forward for Bed Bath & Beyond. It’s unclear what that could look like.

Houston-based natural gas pipeline Ruby Pipeline LLC received U.S. bankruptcy court approval on Friday for a chapter 11 plan built around a $282 million sale of its assets to Tallgrass Energy LP, Reuters reported. Under the plan, Tallgrass, a Blackstone Group company, will acquire a 680-mile pipeline that is used to transport natural gas from the Rocky Mountains to Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Ruby Pipeline will use cash from that sale, as well as a $135 million contribution from its equity owners Kinder Morgan Inc and Pembina Pipeline Corp and $162.8 million in its existing cash accounts, to repay creditors and wind down its business. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Goldblatt approved the plan during a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware. No creditors opposed the plan, and Ruby Pipeline attorney Sunny Singh said at Friday's hearing that the Tallgrass sale "allowed us to resolve all of the disputes in this case." Ruby Pipeline filed for chapter 11 protection on March 31st of last year because it didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay $475 million in unsecured notes that were due on April 1. The company blamed its financial troubles on declining natural gas prices and the subsequent drop in demand for its services.

FTX can put four key units including derivatives arm LedgerX and stock-clearing platform Embed up for sale, a Delaware bankruptcy judge ruled on Thursday, CoinDesk.com reported. Investment bank Perella Weinberg is now allowed to start the sale process, which also includes the crypto exchange’s European and Japanese units, and which have already attracted as many as 117 expressions of interest. In formal terms, the judicial decision allows bids, an auction, and a sales hearing to take place, with permission for any actual transaction to come later. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey charged with overseeing the wind-up of the exchange, approved the measures in an order dated Thursday after a hearing held Wednesday. Sale notices will be published within around three business days, with indications of interest to be received between Jan. 18 for Embed and Feb. 1 for FTX Europe and Japan.

Crypto exchange FTX will ask a U.S. bankruptcy court on Wednesday to allow it to auction off pieces of its business and to keep customer names secret for at least six months while it works to recover funds lost in what was allegedly a huge fraud, Reuters reported. FTX will ask U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Delaware to approve procedures for selling affiliates LedgerX, Embed, FTX Japan and FTX Europe as a way of raising funds for customers, who have lost potentially billions of dollars. FTX's founder, Sam Bankman-Fried was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and six conspiracy counts last month in Manhattan federal court for allegedly stealing customer deposits to pay debts from his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and lying to equity investors about FTX's financial condition. He has pleaded not guilty. The four companies FTX intends to sell are relatively independent from the broader FTX group, and each has its own segregated customer accounts and separate management teams, according to FTX court filings. The crypto exchange has said it is not committed to selling any of the companies, but that it received dozens of unsolicited offers. FTX expects to generate additional bids by scheduling auctions in February and March. The U.S. Trustee, a bankruptcy watchdog that is part of the Department of Justice, has opposed selling the affiliates before an extensive investigation can be done into the extent of the FTX fraud allegedly carried out by Bankman-Fried.

Voyager Digital won court approval to sell its crypto platform to Binance.US for $20 million as part of Voyager’s plan to liquidate in bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Under terms of the deal, about $1 billion worth of assets that Voyager holds on behalf of customers would be taken over by Binance, which will then give account holders the option to cash out. The deal cannot close until U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Wiles approves the related bankruptcy liquidation plan. Customers will have the right to vote on the Binance deal in the coming weeks when they are asked to consider supporting the liquidation plan, Voyager lawyer Christine A. Okike said during a court hearing held by telephone yesterday. Judge Wiles overruled objections from federal regulators and a handful of states, which questioned whether Binance was financially stable enough to close the proposed transaction and how the company would fulfill its pledge to cash out customers. Once minor wording changes are made, Wiles said he would sign a final order allowing Voyager to enter a contract with Binance and to send creditors an outline of the deal and the liquidation plan for a vote.

UK-based energy services provider Altera Infrastructure has emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy, a few months after filing for it, Offshore-Energy.biz reported. Thanks to a charter for an FPSO, which is expected to be deployed at one of the largest undeveloped oil fields in the UK, the firm expects to strengthen its balance sheet further, as it sees this as a foundation for long-term growth if this project goes ahead. Back in August 2022, Altera Infrastructure, formerly a part of Teekay, entered a chapter 11 bankruptcy process in the U.S. to address its debt of over $1.5 billion. As explained at the time, the firm executed a restructuring support agreement (the RSA) with approximately 71 per cent of its funded debt obligations, which included an investment management company Brookfield and a super-majority of its bank lenders. Altera Shuttle Tankers and FPSO joint ventures were not part of the restructuring process. In an update on Monday, Altera Infrastructure revealed that it has emerged from the chapter 11 process in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas after consummating its chapter 11 plan of reorganisation. This restructuring, which was consummated approximately five months after the chapter 11 process started, addressed more than $1 billion of secured and unsecured holding company debt, $400 million of preferred equity, and $550 million of secured asset-level bank debt, including unsecured guarantees of such debt issued by the firm.
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Bankrupt movie-theater chain Cineworld Group PLC said it continues to miss its box-office projections due to challenging market conditions as it gears up to sell itself out of chapter 11, the Wall Street Journal reported. Joshua Sussberg, a lawyer for U.K.-based Cineworld, owner of Regal Cinemas, told Judge Marvin Isgur of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday that the company’s restructuring effort since its bankruptcy filing in September has been hindered by the lackluster box-office performance. In addition, there haven’t been many blockbusters because the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted film production in Hollywood. “The box office receipts have significantly and consistently underperformed expectations during these cases,” Sussberg said. Cineworld’s average number of admissions from September to December was 37% less than expected, he said. In December alone, the admission number was 44% less than what the company had projected when it entered chapter 11, he said.