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From small-town Vermont to Los Angeles, local governments are commandeering shut-down hospitals to add space amid the coronavirus pandemic — a trend that could revamp the market for health-care facilities, the Wall Street Journal reported. Just months ago, St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles and Astria Regional Medical Center in Yakima, Wash., were closed, unable to bring in enough revenue to stay afloat. Both are poised to reopen with the help of state funds and, in the case of St. Vincent, $135 million from the family foundation of Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times. In Vermont, a bankruptcy court pulled back from the brink one of many hospitals facing a financial squeeze from the drop-off in lucrative surgeries that are critical to their bottom lines. In West Virginia, a government-funded community health-care group stepped in with a deal that will save critical beds at another bankrupt small hospital. These hospitals’ rebirth comes as health-care facilities are being pushed to their limits by the pandemic. As medical centers across the U.S. prepare for an influx of hundreds of thousands of new patients, President Trump is expected to use a federal stimulus package to pay hospitals that treat uninsured people infected with the new coronavirus. Bankruptcy judges are acting quickly on creative arrangements that allow public officials to rescue health systems that could be pushed to their limits by a surge in COVID-19 cases.

A foundation run by the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Time is looking to buy the closed St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles out of bankruptcy for $135 million and reopen it to treat coronavirus patients, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, a nonprofit founded about a decade ago by Patrick Soon-Shiong and his wife, Michele B. Chan, has agreed to serve as the lead bidder to acquire St. Vincent from the hospital’s bankrupt owner, Verity Health System of California Inc., according to court papers. The proposed deal comes as California looks to ramp up critical medical access and provide other essential health-care services. While California has only about 6,900 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is gearing up to add 50,000 more hospital beds statewide to cope with the growing number of Covid-19 infections. A South Africa-born surgeon turned entrepreneur, Dr. Soon-Shiong said in an interview he is particularly concerned about the Los Angeles homeless population, which city officials estimated last year at more than 36,000. St. Vincent’s, a 366-bed facility, shut its doors in January after a previous deal to sell it fell apart. Opened in 1856, it was Los Angeles’s first hospital.

Milk processor Dean Foods Co. named Dairy Farmers of America Inc.’s $433 million bid as the winner at a bankruptcy auction for most of Dean’s assets, a step toward potentially uniting the two dairy giants, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Dallas-based Dean, which filed for chapter 11 protection in November, said yesterday that the DFA cooperative would purchase 44 fluid and frozen dairy processing facilities, subject to the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. The purchase price represents a slight increase from the $425 million DFA had previously offered under an agreement to serve as the lead bidder at auction. Dean later stripped DFA of its designation as the stalking horse after other creditors objected, forcing it to compete on equal footing with other bidders. Some farm groups have raised concerns that a tie-up between Dean and DFA, based in Kansas City, Kan., might lead to an excessive concentration of milk buyers in parts of the country. Dean, the top U.S. milk processor by sales, has struggled for years with slumping consumer demand for traditional cow’s milk. The company’s brands include DairyPure, Land-O-Lakes and TruMoo.

Warren, Mich.-based Art Van Furniture Inc. halted store sales on March 19 and expedited a mass layoff as coronavirus began to grip the region, but it might not be the end for the Art Van brand after all, Crain's Detroit Business reported. Gary Van Elslander on Wednesday submitted a bid to buy the Art Van brand name and trademark. The bottom fell out swiftly for Art Van Furniture Inc. earlier this month. It filed for chapter 11 protection on March 9 and announced its liquidation would last around two months. Operations across all its stores ended abruptly 10 days later as the coronavirus outbreak took hold of the region. Art Van Furniture was acquired in 2017 by Boston-based private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners LP for an estimated $550 million. The Art Van trademark is owned by its creditors Hilco Merchant Resources LLC, based in Illinois, and FS KKR Capital Corp., based in Pennsylvania. Any purchase would need to go through the bankruptcy approval process, expected to wrap up around the end of April. Van Elslander's bid was for less than $1 million. The exact amount was not disclosed but will eventually be made public as part of the bankruptcy proceeding records.

Murray Energy Corp., the nation’s largest privately owned coal business, is moving forward with a plan to hand itself to its senior creditors after failing to attract competing offers for its assets in bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The St. Clairsville, Ohio-based coal producer said on Friday in a court filing that it received no other qualified bids for its assets and canceled a proposed chapter 11 auction that had been scheduled for later this week. Murray will instead give control to a lender group that has agreed to forgive $1.2 billion in debt. The group’s offer covers Murray’s thermal and metallurgical coal business as well as its equity interests in coal producer Foresight Energy LP, which also is in bankruptcy, and its interest in commodity trader Javelin Global Commodities Holdings LLP, according to court papers. The proposal can be challenged by other Murray creditors or stakeholders and must be approved by Judge John E. Hoffman Jr. of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Columbus, Ohio. A hearing to consider approval of the sale is scheduled for June 2.

The trustee assigned to the bankruptcy of Tough Mudder filed a petition last week asking the bankruptcy court to allow a transition between chapter 11 bankruptcy and chapter 7, mudrunguide.com reported. "Given that, among other things, (i) the trustee has sold all of the debtors’ operational assets of any meaningful value, (ii) the debtors have no continuing business operations that can generate value, and (iii) the debtors’ estates do not have the resources necessary to solicit and confirm a chapter 11 plan, the trustee believes that conversion of the chapter 11 cases to chapter 7 is necessary and appropriate," according to the petition. The largest of the unsecured creditors is Tough Mudder's registration platform Active and according to the filing, they have no objections to the conversion. If the petition is approved this will end the final chapter of Tough Mudder as it was owned by Will Dean.

MovieFone — the online theater ticket website that was once sold to AOL in 1999 for $388 million in stock — was acquired at a bankruptcy auction on Thursday for a bid of $1,075,000, the Hollywood Reporter reported. A business listed as Born In Cleveland, LLC was the winning bidder for the site, per a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on March 19. MovieFone had most recently been owned by bankrupt MoviePass owner Helios & Matheson, which acquired the site in 2018 from AOL's parent company with the goal to use its then-6 million average monthly audience to grow its subscriber base. MovieFone, which began in 1989 as interactive phone guide for film listings and showtimes, launched a website (MovieLink) in 1995 and once touted in its '90s heyday that 100 million moviegoers used its service. The service was part of AOL's $4.4 billion sale to Verizon in 2015 before it was sold for $23 million in April 2018 to Helios & Matheson.