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A bankruptcy judge has temporarily halted biotechnology company Melinta Therapeutics Inc.’s proposed chapter 11 sale plan, which calls for a potential takeover deal with the company’s senior lender, health-care investment firm Deerfield Management Co., WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., instructed the antibiotics maker to rework its proposed bidding and sale process of its assets to allow more time to look for other competitive bids. She directed lawyers for Melinta and creditors to consider extending the bid deadline and opening up the process to accept rival bids. The condensed time frame and restrictive bidding procedures concerned the judge because they could prevent someone else from bidding, she said at a six-hour hearing Tuesday. Judge Silverstein’s request for Melinta to push back its sale timeline came after several objections from the federal government’s bankruptcy watchdog and some creditors. The bid deadline had initially been set for Feb. 10 and an auction for Feb. 13. The U.S. trustee and Vatera Healthcare Partners LLC, a venture-capital and private-equity investment arm of Vatera Holdings LLC and one of Melinta’s largest creditors, had balked at terms of the deal that would allow Deerfield to proceed with a $140 million credit bid.

Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc., the parent of the MoviePass cinema-ticket subscription service, said yesterday that it has filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy, allowing a court to sell its remaining assets and wind down all operations, MarketWatch.com reported. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company, which shuttered MoviePass back in September, said board members Prathap Singh, Gavriel Ralbag, Muralikrishna Gadiyaram and Joseph Fried have tendered their resignations, leaving the company with no remaining board members. Parthasarathy Krishnan has resigned as the Interim chief executive and Robert Damon has resigned as interim chief financial officer. MoviePass made a splash when it first started offering users unlimited entry to films for a monthly subscription price that was way below what was needed to cover the costs. The company was soon under water and was recording million-dollar monthly deficits. Executives said that they were hoping to generate revenue by monetizing user data and selling ads for movies and theater chains, plans that never came to fruition. Before launching MoviePass, Helios and Matheson was a small data-analytics company. The stock has fallen to zero.

Attorney Kavita Gupta has been appointed to serve as the Chapter 11 Trustee overseeing the bankruptcy sale of 38.56 acres of privately-owned real property on the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, according to a press release. The bankruptcy court has approved bid procedures setting a bid deadline of April 30, 2020 and May 19, 2020 auction for qualified bidders. The 38.56-acre development site includes 750 feet of frontage on Las Vegas Boulevard directly across from Mandalay Bay and is within walking distance from the new Las Vegas Raiders stadium. On April 30, 2018, Desert Land, LLC (Case No. 18-12454), Desert Oasis Apartments, LLC (Case No. 18-12456) and Desert Oasis Investments, LLC (Case No. 18-12457) filed chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions in the District of Nevada. As the court appointed Chapter 11 Trustee, Kavita Gupta is vested with the exclusive right to oversee the sale process and to manage the debtors' property and business activities. In December 2019, Keen-Summit Capital Partners LLC and Colliers International were engaged by the Trustee as exclusive real estate agents for this offering. 

Creditors of bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions are opposing the sale of its oil refinery to Hilco Redevelopment Partners, saying another developer made a more lucrative bid for the site, Reuters reported. Industrial Realty Group submitted a bid of $265 million during an auction last week to sell the idled refinery site, $25 million more than Hilco’s bid, according to filings by law firm Brown Rudnick LLP in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The refiner announced on Wednesday that it agreed to sell its 335,000 barrel-per-day refinery, the largest and oldest on the U.S. East Coast, to Chicago-based real estate developer Hilco, naming Industrial Realty Group as a back-up bidder. PES’s unsecured creditors, which include companies that had supplied contract work to PES, as well as workers’ unions employed by the refinery, have pushed for a buyer that would restart the complex. Hilco’s proposal for the more-than 1,300-acre (530-hectare) site would result in a permanent shutdown of the plant, Brown Rudnick said, leaving those contractors and union members out of work.

Bankrupt Philadelphia Energy Solutions is expected to sell its fire-damaged refinery site to real estate developer Hilco Redevelopment Partners, Reuters reported. The agreement between PES and Hilco, a Chicago-based developer that specializes in redeveloping industrial properties, is expected to be announced soon.  Any sale would have to be approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. A sale to Hilco would reduce the possibility that the more-than 1,300-acre (526-hectare) Philadelphia site would be resurrected as an oil refinery. Hilco, which has $2.5 billion of assets under management and has acquired 5,000 acres in North America, specializes in redeveloping obsolete industrial sites, according to its website. The 335,000 barrel-per-day refinery is the largest and oldest on the U.S. East Coast, but was shut after a fire and a series of explosions on June 21 last year that destroyed a key processing unit. PES filed for chapter 11 protection a month after the blaze and put the 150-year-old refining operation up for sale.

McDermott International Inc. said that it will file for chapter 11 protection yesterday, after succumbing to depressed conditions in the offshore drilling industry and setbacks in major energy projects, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The engineering firm said that it has reached an agreement with more than two-thirds of its creditors in a restructuring transaction that would eliminate more than $4.6 billion in debt. McDermott has obtained commitments for a $2.81 billion debtor-in-possession facility to fund its bankruptcy proceedings. The financing, subject to court approval, could enable the company to stabilize its cash flows, McDermott said. As part of the restructuring, the company said yesterday that it would sell Lummus Technology, which licenses gas-processing, refining, petrochemical and coal-gasification technologies, to a joint partnership between private-equity firms Chatterjee Group and Rhône Group for $2.73 billion. The company said it would have the option to retain or buy a 10 percent equity ownership interest in the joint partnership. McDermott said that it expects to hold an auction in about 45 days to solicit superior bids for the Lummus business.

Verso Corp., which in November revealed plans to sell its Androscoggin Mill in Jay as part of a $400 million deal, said Monday that it has all the needed regulatory approvals to move forward with the sale, the Bangor (Maine) Daily News reported. The final approval will come Jan. 31, when shareholders meet in New York to vote on the sale at the company’s stockholder meeting. But that meeting likely will be contentious, with two large stockholders opposing the sale. Shareholders Atlas Holdings and Blue Wolf Capital Partners oppose the sale of the mills and have reportedly asked other stockholders to abstain from voting for it. The private equity firms, which together own 9.43 percent of Verso’s stock, have proposed their own directors for Verso’s board. They also jointly own Twin Rivers Paper Co. in Madawaska.

The fate of the largest East Coast oil refinery is set to be decided on Friday in an auction that could determine whether the Philadelphia plant is restarted or used for a different purpose for the first time in over a century, Reuters reported. The refinery’s owner, Philadelphia Energy Solutions, is scheduled to reveal the winning bidder on Wednesday during a hearing at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, which will need to approve the sale. PES filed for bankruptcy on July 21, a month after a fire and explosions destroyed a portion of its 335,000 barrel-per-day oil refinery complex. It wound down the roughly 150-year-old plant and laid off hundreds of workers over the following weeks. The PES site located less than three miles (5 km) from downtown Philadelphia has also attracted bids from several real estate developers. One of the groups proposed to model itself after the Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, which was turned into a campus for company headquarters, including clothing retailer Urban Outfitters, while operating a section for commercial shipping. Most of the bids from real estate developers involved keeping the site as an industrial operation.

Alta Mesa Resources Inc. selected a private-equity venture’s $320 million bid as the winner at a chapter 11 auction for the oil and gas driller and its bankrupt pipeline and storage subsidiary, Kingfisher Midstream LLC, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The winning bidder, a joint venture of private-equity firm Bayou City Energy Management LLC and energy company Mach Resources LLC, added $10 million to a previous offer to prevail in the auction, according to court records. Alta Mesa selected the venture, BCE-Mach III LLC, over a competing offer from bondholders. A sale transaction requires approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston before closing, and a hearing to consider the proposed deal is scheduled for today. The bondholders said in court papers on Friday that they may object to the manner in which the auction was conducted and the selection of the winning bid. Kingfisher lenders also objected, saying that the sale process improperly excluded bidders interested in purchasing only midstream assets.