A creditor group that holds roughly $3.2 billion in Endo International PLC debt said it is weighing a rival bid to purchase the pharmaceutical company’s assets out of chapter 11, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The group, comprising more than a dozen institutions that own a cross section of Endo’s bank and bond debt, is a potential challenger to a stalking-horse bid, which sets a minimum for others to beat, that the company announced when it filed for bankruptcy this week under the weight of opioid litigation. The first-lien creditors behind the stalking-horse bid have agreed to acquire the business out of chapter 11 in exchange for forgiving $6 billion in company debt. The cross-holding group includes J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc., Citadel Equity Fund and funds managed by Franklin Advisers Inc. and Oaktree Capital Management LP, according to papers filed on Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Andrew Rosenberg, a lawyer representing the group, said during Endo’s debut bankruptcy hearing Thursday that his clients don’t believe “the keys to this company” should be turned over to the stalking-horse bidders. The leading bid, he said, provides a starting point for a sale of the business and nothing more. The creditor group formed in April 2021 and negotiated for months on a potential restructuring, but talks with Endo cooled off in the weeks leading up to the bankruptcy filing because the price of the drugmaker’s debt had fallen, Mr. Rosenberg said. But the price of Endo’s first-lien debt rebounded after the company released information showing it “vastly outperformed” negative first-quarter guidance, Mr. Rosenberg said, adding the drugmaker’s second-lien debt has also experienced a similar rebound. “We definitely are considering a bid but we’re not promising what we’ll do in these cases yet,” Mr. Rosenberg said.
Online retailer Enjoy Technology Inc. received approval from a U.S. bankruptcy court on Friday to sell its business to technology repair company Asurion LLC for $110 million, Reuters reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge J. Kate Stickles in Wilmington, Del., signed off on the sale at a hearing on Friday, saying it was a reasonable exercise of the debtor's business judgment and was a fair, arms-length transaction. Enjoy, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup, filed for bankruptcy protection on June 30 with $26 million in debt. Asurion offered to provide the company with a $55 million bankruptcy loan and to buy it. Enjoy had contacted more than 30 other potential suitors since filing for bankruptcy, but it canceled a planned auction after none of them chose to outbid Asurion. Founded in 2014 by former Apple Inc and JCPenney Co executive Ron Johnson, the company filed for chapter 11 protection less than nine months after going public through a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Enjoy sells smartphones and other technology products in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, delivering products and providing tech support to customers' homes.
When Zosano Pharma Corp. spun out of Alza Corp. 16 years ago — and up until the company plotted the last in a series of regulatory filings to win approval of its first drug-coated microneedle patch — its leaders hoped to transform drug delivery, the San Francisco Business Times reported. Instead, the Fremont, Calif.-based company is set to be sold to a onetime partner today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware for up to $1.25 million, a fraction of the money it raised earlier this year in a last-ditch effort to keep the company and its migraine pain-relief patch program afloat. Emergex USA Corp., a Doylestown, Pa.-based subsidiary of the U.K.’s Emergex Vaccines Holdings Ltd., would pay $1 million for substantially all of Zosano's assets if the sale is approved Thursday. Emergex also could pay as much as an additional $250,000 to cover the dismantling and removal of some of those assets. Emergex was chosen last week by Zosano and consultants after an auction. A $500,000 bid from LTS Lohmann Theraprie-Systeme AG of Germany — only for some Zosano assets — was set aside as a backup bid if the Emergex deal falls apart.
A Delaware judge ordered Armstrong World Industries Inc., a maker of walls and ceilings, to let the new buyers of its bankrupt former unit Armstrong Flooring Inc. continue to use its name and trademarks, clearing the way for the flooring company to sell its assets out of chapter 11, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Mary Walrath of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., told publicly traded Armstrong World to sign over the right to use the corporate name and related trademarks, handing a win to Armstrong Flooring and the companies buying its assets. Armstrong Flooring, which was spun off from Armstrong World in 2016, filed for chapter 11 in May, saying it couldn’t raise prices enough to counter supply-chain disruptions and higher costs. A dispute over the brand name had threatened to derail imminent asset sales valued at $200 million, according to Armstrong Flooring, which said Armstrong World was playing hardball about allowing the buyers to keep using the business name. Armstrong Flooring sued Armstrong World earlier this week, seeking a court order granting buyers the trademark rights. The judge said in an emergency hearing Friday that the harm that would result from failing to close the sales outweighs any harm to Armstrong World from allowing the buyers to use the Armstrong name.
