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The owner of Los Angeles’s most expensive real estate listing ever, a sprawling 157-acre undeveloped property in Beverly Hills dubbed “The Mountain,” has filed for bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Secured Capital Partners LLC, the current titleholder, sought chapter 11 protection on Wednesday at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles to prevent a key lender from foreclosing on the property. Bankruptcy court papers peg Secured Capital Partners’ total assets at somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion. How much the lender is owed is the subject of a dispute that will now be decided by a bankruptcy judge. Ronald Richards, a lawyer for the property owner, said that filing for bankruptcy will provide a fair forum to determine how much the lender, the Mark Hughes Family Trust, is owed, potentially preserving value for other creditors. “This is chapter 11 that is designed to save close to $200 million in equity from being unfairly diverted to a single creditor,” he said Friday. The largely undeveloped hilltop was once listed for a record $1 billion, though that figure was later slashed to $650 million. Now, the property is slated to be sold to the highest bidder in a bankruptcy-court-supervised sale process.

Celebrities, athletes, private collectors and other wealthy individuals have expressed interest in acquiring the archives of Ebony and Jet magazines, said an adviser marketing the collection of photographs, artwork and recordings documenting decades of African-American life and culture, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The archives, appraised in 2015 at $46 million, are set to be auctioned in mid-July, months after the magazines’ former publisher — Johnson Publishing Co. — filed for bankruptcy. Large corporations, museums and family offices also have expressed interest in the collection, said Hilco Streambank Chief Executive Gabe Fried, who is marketing the archives on behalf of a bankruptcy trustee. The archives include nearly 1 million photographs and more than 3 million negatives and slides, as well as audio and video recordings, according to Hilco Streambank. The collection includes images of notable figures including Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Nina Simone, Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther King Jr., court papers say.

Amazon has agreed to buy part of ad tech company Sizmek, including its ad server, CNBC.com reported on Friday. Amazon said that it agreed to buy Sizmek Ad Server and Sizmek Dynamic Creative Optimization, which is a tool that helps personalize ads using data. Amazon said its own advertising unit, Amazon Advertising, and Sizmek “have many mutual customers.” The two Sizmek units will operate separately from Amazon Advertising for the time being. Sizmek filed for chapter 11 protection in March, listing its assets at between $100 million and $500 million. In April, Zeta Global said it had agreed to buy Sizmek’s data management and demand-side platforms for up to $36 million. Sizmek also owns Peer39, which provides contextual targeting tools.

Online furniture and appliance seller DirectBuy Home Improvement Inc., a subsidiary of e-commerce business CSC Generation, has won a bankruptcy auction for home-decor retailer Z Gallerie LLC with a bid valued at $20.3 million, the Wall Street Journal reported. DirectBuy’s bid comprises $7.7 million cash and $12.6 million in debt provided by KKR Credit Advisors and B. Riley Financial Inc , according to papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. CSC Generation, an e-commerce business founded by Justin Yoshimura, owns DirectBuy and several retail brands; CSC purchased the intellectual property of Bon-Ton Stores Inc. last year. The proposed transaction will be finalized through a chapter 11 plan which already has been filed with the bankruptcy court, said Joshua Sussberg, a Kirkland & Ellis LLP lawyer representing Z Gallerie. Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein is scheduled to consider Z Gallerie’s chapter 11 plan on June 11, court papers say.

Offshore drilling contractor Seadrill is considering selling non-core assets, including its 15.7 percent stake in oil service firm Archer, to reduce its liabilities, the firm’s outgoing chief financial officer said yesterday, according to Reuters. Seadrill, controlled by Norwegian billionaire John Fredriksen, emerged from chapter 11 protection last year, and is betting on the offshore oil market’s recovery to repay its remaining debts and liabilities. The company repurchased in April $311 million out of $880 million in 12 percent senior secured notes due in 2025, issued as part of the chapter 11 plan.

A federal bankruptcy judge said yesterday he intends to approve the sale of the Reading Eagle to a large newspaper chain known for taking over struggling papers and then making deep newsroom cuts, the Associated Press reported. MediaNews Group, better known as Digital First Media, offered $5 million for the assets of the family-owned Reading Eagle Co., which filed for bankruptcy protection in March. Chief Judge Richard E. Fehling said yesterday that he plans to sign off on the sale. Digital First owns about 200 papers and other publications, including The Denver Post and the Boston Herald. Its biggest shareholder is Alden Global Capital, a New York hedge fund that invests in distressed companies. Like many other newspapers, the Eagle has struggled with declining ad revenues. It was also burdened with heavy debt from the 2009 expansion of its downtown printing press and distribution center. The newspaper said it has been losing millions of dollars a year. Peter Barbey, the president and chief executive of the Reading Eagle Co. — whose great-great-grandfather started the paper — had been loaning it money to keep it afloat. The company said it will "re-create" the Eagle so the paper "has the appropriate resources" to provide local news coverage. Digital First did not say how many of the paper's workers it plans to lay off or whether it will reduce the number of days it publishes a print edition.

The foreclosure sale of the Greater Cleveland Avenue Christian Church in North Carolina can go forward as planned on Friday, a federal bankruptcy judge announced after denying a church motion yesterday that would have forestalled the sale, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. After a hearing that lasted more than three hours, Judge Catharine Aron came back with a ruling that left members of the congregation in saddened silence as they filed out. Acknowledging the congregation's love for their church, Judge Aron called it unfortunate that the decision members were hoping for "will not occur today." Judge Aron denied the church's motion to modify its reorganization plan in a way that would have allowed the congregation to stay in its building. The church had asked Judge Aron to modify its loan from Apex Bank to give it more time to pay: The church proposed extending the maturity date by three years, to 2022, and paying an interest rate of 6 percent on $3.3 million owed to the bank. With more time, the church argued, it could arrange financing to pay off the Apex loan, which now has a payoff total of about $3.5 million. The church has been paying Apex $13,000 per month as rent during the bankruptcy proceedings. Making interest-only payments on the new plan would have required the church to pay Apex some $25,000 per month.

New England Motor Freight Inc. is preparing a six-week process to sell off more than 1,000 semi-tractors and some 4,000 trailers in the largest bankruptcy auction of its kind, according to people orchestrating the sale, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. NEMF, once one of the largest trucking companies in the Northeast, sought chapter 11 protection in February. Most of what remains of the company, which had been losing customers and lacked cash to refurbish its fleet, will be liquidated through the coming auction process. The first of nearly a dozen auctions will begin May 30, near Buffalo, N.Y. Taylor & Martin will then hold two auctions each week, with the final auction set to take place in Elizabeth, N.J., on July 10. In addition to the semi-tractors and trailers, nearly 1,000 pieces of miscellaneous equipment, including forklifts, salt spreaders and front-end loaders, also will be auctioned off. NEMF formerly operated out of 36 locations in 15 states, according to Chief Restructuring Officer Vincent Colistra. Since the company filed for bankruptcy, its trucking equipment has been consolidated into 11 locations in eight states, which was itself a daunting task, according to Tracy.