%1

Barring a last-minute buyer, Toys ‘R’ Us will soon disappear from U.S. shopping centers, but the name and its iconic Geoffrey the Giraffe mascot are likely to survive for another generation of Toys ‘R’ Us kids, Reuters reported. Buyers often swoop in on retailers that are going out of business and scoop up brands with an eye on maintaining ties with loyal customers, minus the bricks and mortar. “Toys ‘R’ Us — that’s a fabulous name,” said Cathy Hershcopf, an attorney who specializes in retail bankruptcies. “The jingle, the customer lists, the logo ... and the giraffe goes along with it.” Brand specialists said that they could not put an estimated value on the name, but it will be among the most valuable ever to become available through a bankruptcy liquidation. The name adorns stores in 38 countries, from Australia to Zambia.

Natural gas driller Augustus Energy Resources LLC filed for chapter 11 protection Friday and intends to sell its assets which include wells in eastern Colorado to oil and gas investor OWN Resources Inc., subject to higher bids, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Augustus Energy, which is privately owned, said it has been squeezed by falling natural gas prices and significant debt service payments that forced the company to stop drilling new wells, according to court papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The driller owns approximately 1,575 natural gas wells in the DJ Basin, located primarily in Yuma County in eastern Colorado. Augustus Energy President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Durrett said in a declaration filed with the court that his company entered into an asset purchase agreement with OWN Resources on Thursday. The stalking-horse agreement, which must be approved by a judge, would set the floor for the price of Augustus Energy’s assets at a potential auction. The terms of the purchase agreement with OWN Resources weren’t immediately disclosed.

Bon-Ton Stores Inc. bondholders plan to make a $650 million joint bid for assets of the department-store chain with liquidation firm Great American Group, a lawyer for the bondholders said yesterday, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The group of second-lien bondholders will use the $100 million value of their bonds as part of the consideration, in a credit bid for the company, the attorney, Sidney Levinson, told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The bondholders and Great American plan to liquidate the business if their bid prevails in an upcoming sale process, Levinson said. Meanwhile, the retailer is continuing to search for a strategic investor to keep part of the department-store chain alive after bankruptcy. The company, which filed for chapter 11 protection in early February after years of declining sales, has already said it would close 42 of its 260 stores.

The Provident Bank bought back Smuttynose Brewing Co. for $8.25 million following a foreclosure auction on Friday, but a Portsmouth, N.H.-based investor said that he is planning to purchase the popular brewery, SeaCoastOnline.com reported. Norman Rice said that he entered a verbal agreement with Provident Bank in the minutes that followed the 2 p.m. auction at Smuttynose’s facility. Provident Bank President Chuck Withee said that multiple other buyers also approached him after the auction about buying Smuttynose and that no sale has been made, but Rice spoke confidently of his plans to revitalize the struggling beer company. The sale will not include the Portsmouth Brewery, also owned by Smuttynose founder Peter Egelston and his partner Joanne Francis. They will continue to operate the Portsmouth Brewery. Egelston announced the foreclosure auction in January, saying that an explosion of microbreweries caused the company’s growth to decelerate, among other factors. The company’s financial models were based on 20 years of consistent growth, he said. The brewery launched in 1994 and opened its current state-of-the-art brewing facility in Hampton, N.H., in 2014. 

Financier Lynn Tilton on Sunday placed the Zohar investment funds she created under chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a maneuver designed to quell lawsuits over her collection of distressed companies and realize their full value, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Structured as collateralized loan obligations, the three Zohar funds were created by Tilton to finance her private-equity empire but are now locked in several lawsuits with her over loans made to troubled companies in her portfolio. Tilton said in a sworn declaration filed yesterday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., that she planned to use the chapter 11 process to sell the underlying portfolio companies or refinance their obligations to the Zohar funds. The companies, she said, are worth more than the roughly $2.4 billion owed to investors in Zohar I, Zohar II and Zohar III. But the cloud of legal uncertainty has turned off potential buyers and lenders and kept their value tied up in the courts, according to her bankruptcy documents.

Texas regulators that killed two earlier deals for a major piece of the state’s power infrastructure, Oncor, yesterday gave the nod to Sempra Energy’s $9.45 billion deal for a majority stake, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Sempra, of California, was the winner of a competition that lasted years, a contest for the thriving transmissions business that dominated the bankruptcy of Energy Future Holdings Corp., the former TXU Corp. The Public Utility Commission of Texas voted to approve Sempra’s buyout of Energy Future’s 80 percent stake in the business, which carries power to millions of people.

An auction to sell West Virginia’s largest newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, is scheduled for today, the Associated Press reported. The Gazette-Mail reports bankruptcy court filings show a second company, HD Media of Huntington, W. Va., has placed a bid. A subsidiary of Wheeling, W. Va.-based Ogden Newspapers was the highest bidder Jan. 30, when Charleston Newspapers, owner of the Gazette-Mail, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and issued a 60-day layoff notice to employees. The amount of HD Media’s bid wasn’t disclosed. But to push the sale to an auction, HD Media had to bid $500,000 more than Ogden’s $10.911 million by a March 6 deadline under the bankruptcy court’s order.