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U.S. midstream infrastructure company Tallgrass said on Friday that it had reached an agreement to acquire Houston-based Ruby Pipeline, which has been under chapter 11 protection since March, Natural Gas World reported. The transaction, the value of which was not disclosed, is expected to close in Q1 2023, subject to customary regulatory approvals and closing conditions. Ruby is a 1.5bn ft3/day, 680-mile pipeline between Opal, Wyoming and Malin, Oregon. It was placed under bankruptcy protection by its joint venture owners, Kinder Morgan and Canada’s Pembina Pipeline, in March. In November, Pembina Pipeline said it had reached a settlement agreement with Ruby that provided for the release of Pembina from any causes of action that might arise from the bankruptcy proceeding. Pembina agreed to a US$102mn payment to Ruby but retains all its recovery rights as a creditor. Ruby, Tallgrass said, offers a “unique opportunity” to advance its initiatives to offer decarbonised energy solutions such as responsibly sourced and renewable natural gas to customers across the U.S.

Clovis Oncology Inc. filed for bankruptcy and plans to sell its experimental cancer drug at an auction with Novartis Innovative Therapies making a binding, opening bid worth as much as $681 million, Bloomberg News reported. Novartis has agreed to pay $50 million initially and another $630.75 million in payments if the cancer drug, FAP-2286, wins regulatory approval and later hits certain sale goals, Clovis said in a statement. The agreement will be considered the opening bid of a court-supervised auction, should a judge approve the deal and competing offers come in. For Clovis, which once had a market value of over $3 billion, the opening bid for its pipeline candidate is a far cry from the $5.1 billion that a competitor secured from GSK Plc in 2018. Back then Clovis was riding high on speculation it could secure a similar deal for another cancer drug, Rubraca. But regulatory setbacks and disappointing sales have left the company saddled with debts. The company is also talking to other parties about selling different parts of its business.

Crypto broker Genesis told clients that it could take weeks, not days, for it to find a path forward for its troubled lending unit, which was hobbled by the implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, Bloomberg News reported. “These are extraordinary times in our industry, and, while we are working urgently, this is a comprehensive process that we expect will take some time,” Derar Islim, Genesis’s interim CEO, wrote in a letter seen by Bloomberg News. “We anticipate that it will take additional weeks rather than days for us to arrive at a path forward,” he said, adding that the company will update clients on timing as it makes progress. The sudden collapse of FTX, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, roiled the digital-asset market and triggered a liquidity crunch at Genesis. The company has been trying to raise at least $1 billion in fresh cash for its lending unit, though some investors approached for the lifeline have balked at the interconnectedness between Genesis and other related entities that are part of Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group. Genesis, which warned potential investors that it may need to file for bankruptcy if its fundraising efforts fail, halted redemptions at the lending unit shortly after revealing on Nov. 10 that it had $175 million locked in an FTX trading account. Creditors to the embattled crypto brokerage — including the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini, whose yield product depended on Genesis as a key partner — have since organized with restructuring lawyers to coordinate efforts on options.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on Monday signaled a desire for clearer rules on when appeals courts can hear disputes stemming from bankruptcy sales, in a case involving a cheap lease Sears had at the Mall of America that was transferred following its bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, a lawyer for the Minneapolis-based mall's parent company, MOAC Mall Holdings LLC, sought to convince the justices to reverse a lower court ruling finding it had to honor an extremely tenant-friendly lease it made with Sears Holdings Corp in 1991 that offered Sears rent of just $10 a year for 100 years. After Sears went bankrupt in 2018, it sold its assets for $5.2 billion to former chairman Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund ESL Investments Inc., and the lease was transferred months later to Transform Holdco LLC, a company formed by Sears' new owners. Transform's lawyer Eric Brunstad argued that under bankruptcy law no court has the jurisdiction to hear Mall of America's appeal and that finality in bankruptcy sales protects both debtors and buyers.