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Houston-based Neighbors Legacy Holdings Inc. and 48 other related entities filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late last week, the Houston Business Journal reported. Additionally, the company has already lined up a buyer for its Houston-area emergency centers, according to court documents. Neighbors noted that it filed for chapter 11 to “expedite the sale of its Houston and non-Houston operations.” The company operates as Neighbors Health, which includes Neighbors Physician Group, Neighbors Emergency Center and Neighbors Practice Management. The list of debtors includes individual locations of NEC and Neighbors Physicians Group as well as some other entities. Most of the entities listed assets between $1 million and $10 million, though 13 listed smaller ranges and two listed assets between $10 million and $50 million. Similarly, most of the entities listed debts between $1 million and $10 million, but 12 listed smaller ranges and only one listed debts between $10 million and $50 million.

A judge has approved the sale of dormant blog Gawker to Bustle owner Bryan Goldberg for $1.35 million, closing the book on the liquidation of the former gossip and culture blog’s former publisher, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Stuart Bernstein said that he would approve the deal during a court hearing yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Goldberg is the founder and chief executive of Bustle Digital Group, publisher of websites aimed at millennial women including Bustle and Elite Daily. He emerged last week as the top bidder at an auction for Gawker, which has sat dormant in chapter 11 since 2016. Gregg Galardi, a bankruptcy lawyer representing Gawker’s former publisher, said at the hearing that the blog was the company’s last remaining asset to be liquidated and the transaction allows him to close the chapter 11 case more than two years after it began. The blog’s former publisher, Gawker Media LLC, was forced into bankruptcy in 2016 after losing a lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan resulting in a $140 million judgement against the company. Hulk Hogan’s case was secretly funded by billionaire Peter Thiel. Gawker Media has maintained the judgement would have been reduced or overturned had it had the financial means to mount an appeal.

Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. is suing the buyout shop that acquired Harvey Weinstein’s former entertainment studio in a bankruptcy sale, accusing Lantern Capital Partners LP of fraud in connection with the $289 million deal, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lantern declined comment, citing a policy of not commenting on ongoing litigation. The allegations stem from a time when both Yucaipa — the investment firm co-founded by Burkle, a billionaire grocery-store magnate — and Lantern were involved in an effort to help Weinstein Co. avoid bankruptcy. According to Yucaipa, it did the work, but Lantern did the deal, and the new owner is refusing to pay an agreed-to fee for using information gathered by Yucaipa to acquire the Weinstein film and TV business. In a lawsuit filed in state court in California, Yucaipa says it shared information with Lantern based on an agreement that Lantern allegedly never intended to honor.

With Toys “R” Us’s Geoffrey the giraffe facing possible extinction in the wake of the retailer’s closure, the San Antonio Zoo stepped up with a solution to save the bankrupt retailer’s mascot, the Houston Chronicle reported. The zoo last month launched an online campaign in hopes of “adopting” Geoffrey from Toys “R” Us Inc. to use as the face for giraffe conservation. Only 100,000 giraffes remain in the wild, the zoo said. The zoo started a GoFundMe page to raise $100,000 for the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and “to persuade the owners at Toys “R” Us to join the effort to save giraffes by donating the use of their most recognizable intellectual property.” Given it’s mired in bankruptcy, Toy “R” Us isn’t in a position right now to simply give away the rights to Geoffrey for nothing. Bankruptcy lawyers say the retailer has a duty to maximize the amount of money it can recover from selling assets so it can pay creditors. Those assets include its U.S. intellectual property, such as its name, its catchy, vintage TV jingle — “I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys ‘R’ Us kid” — the Babies “R” Us brand, and Geoffrey. “If there are no buyers for Geoffrey, then (Toys “R” Us) can ask the bankruptcy court for permission to donate those rights to a worthy cause, which could include the zoo,” said bankruptcy attorney John Penn, who is not involved in the case. But “they at least need to try to get some kind of value for it first.”

Bankrupt fashion company Nine West Holdings Inc. has asked investment bank Lazard Ltd. to help it explore a sale, a month after its namesake brand known for its footwear and handbags fetched $340 million in an auction, Reuters reported. The sale of the Nine West brand, for $140 million more than the first offer, has emboldened the company to seek an outright sale for its remaining assets which include its jeanswear and jewelry businesses, and the Anne Klein and Kasper women’s’ brands. Some creditors had planned to convert their debt to equity in the remaining business. Nine West is also considering selling the businesses piecemeal. Nine West’s jeanswear and jewelry businesses, together with Anne Klein and Kasper, had net revenues of $1.1 billion in 2017, according to bankruptcy court documents. The jeanswear line includes Gloria Vanderbilt jeans sold in Costco Wholesale Corp., Kohls Corp. and Sears Holdings Corp. Brand licensor Authentic Brands Group LLC completed the acquisition of the Nine West brand this month after beating shoe retailer DSW Inc. in an auction.

Oaktree Capital Management LP, which has been an unhappy junior bondholder in the bankruptcy of Claire’s Stores Inc., said Thursday that the teen retailer’s rush to leave chapter 11 runs the risk of leaving a better offer on the table, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. For months Oaktree has said Claire’s continues to favor senior bondholders and private-equity owner Apollo Management Holdings LP at the expense of other parties. In a court filing on Thursday, Oaktree, which holds 72 percent of secured second-lien bonds in the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company, lodged numerous objections related to the disclosure statement Claire’s filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

Bob Weinstein, chairman of the near-dead film and television studio, will step down from the board today, the company said, formalizing the end of his efforts to retain a significant role in the business as it tries to rebuild, the New York Times reported. Weinstein’s departure was expected. He founded the boutique studio in 2005 with his brother, Harvey, who was fired last year after dozens of women publicly accused him of sexual misconduct. The Weinstein Company subsequently imploded, filing for bankruptcy and agreeing to sell itself to Lantern Capital Partners, a Dallas private equity firm, for $289 million. Lantern had initially agreed to pay $310 million, but won a reduced price after it argued that it had been misled about payments on contracts to vendors and filmmakers. Harvey Weinstein was arrested in Manhattan in May on charges that he sexually assaulted two women. He was indicted this month on additional charges, one of which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. He pleaded not guilty to all the charges and awaits trial. He has denied ever engaging in “non-consensual sex.”

Some investors in funds managed by Dubai-based Abraaj want to block the sale of assets to Colony Capital pending a review of Abraaj’s handling of funds, according to a report seen by Reuters, potentially delaying a deal key to the survival of the investment management business. U.S.-based Colony offered last month to buy the fund management unit that runs Abraaj’s Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and Turkey funds after months of turmoil at Abraaj triggered by a dispute with investors over the use of their money in a $1 billion healthcare fund. Abraaj denies any wrongdoing, but the row has weighed heavily on the Middle East and Africa’s largest private equity firm, which filed for provisional liquidation in the Cayman Islands last month. A review of Abraaj’s handling of investor money is likely to delay the Colony transaction, according to a report by Abraaj Holdings’ provisional liquidators, PwC.

A holding company owned by Bryan Goldberg, the founder of the websites Bleacher Report and Bustle, has been picked as the successful bidder for the assets of former media gossip site Gawker, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. An auction for Gawker was held yesterday in the Manhattan offices of Ropes & Gray LLP, the law firm that has represented Gawker’s former publisher as it has been liquidating in bankruptcy over the last two years. Goldberg placed a high bid of $1.35 million, one of these people said. The assets for sale include the Gawker domain, social media accounts and nearly 200,000 of its published articles. Goldberg, 35 years old, outbid Mineola, N.Y.-based marketing firm Didit Inc., whose $1.13 million offer had led the bidding for the blog, these people said. He said that “there are no firm plans in place at the moment” for Gawker going forward and said he didn’t expect that to change before the end of the year.

A judge approved a discounted sale of Harvey Weinstein’s bankrupt film and television studio to private-equity firm Lantern Capital Partners yesterday, allowing it to close a deal that has been pending for more than two months, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Lantern will pay $289 million, shaving $21 million from the original purchase price for Weinstein Co. following a dispute over costs tied to completing the deal and assuming the entertainment company’s contracts including participation agreements with actors, writers and producers. The transaction is anticipated to close Friday. The revised sale was approved following a settlement over the purchase price between Weinstein Co., Lantern and a committee representing trade creditors and women who have filed lawsuits against the company over alleged misconduct by Weinstein. Before the settlement, Lantern and Weinstein Co. had sought to reduce the price by $23 million.