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Diamond Sports Group, the largest regional sports broadcaster, has reached a restructuring agreement with creditors in bankruptcy, with Amazon agreeing to invest in its streaming business, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Under the agreement, Amazon would provide Diamond’s local channels through Prime Video, which will become Diamond’s primary partner where viewers can purchase direct-to-consumer access to stream games of more than 40 major sports teams across the U.S., Diamond said Wednesday. Viewers will be able to stream Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League games through Prime Video. Diamond also reached a restructuring agreement supported by most of its largest creditor groups. A group of creditors have agreed to provide Diamond with a $450 million loan to finance the remaining bankruptcy proceedings and pay down debt, according to the company. Hein Park Capital Management and PGIM are among Diamond bondholders who agreed to backstop the new loan. All Diamond bondholders will have the opportunity to invest in the new loan. The agreement represents a sharp reversal of the fortunes of both Diamond and its debt investors. Diamond Sports was close to liquidating its business earlier as talks with the sports leagues hit a snag. Its creditors were divided on whether to try to revive the company. And it was mired in a legal dispute with parent company Sinclair Broadcast Group. Under the restructuring plan, the investors have also agreed to swap their debt into equity. They, along with other bondholders and Amazon, will become owners of the reorganized company.

The New York Department of Financial Services said Digital Currency Group subsidiary Genesis Global trading will pay an $8 million penalty and surrender its license from the regulator after an investigation found significant failings in the company's anti-money laundering and cybersecurity programs, Reuters reported. Genesis — a cryptocurrency market-maker and brokerage firm — failed to maintain an effective compliance program for anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act requirements and did not file sufficient Suspicious Activity Reports, which requires financial institutions to flag certain transactions to law enforcement. “Genesis Global Trading’s failure to maintain a functional compliance program demonstrated a disregard for the Department’s regulatory requirements and exposed the company and its customers to potential threats," said NYDFS Superintendent Adrienne Harris in a statement. As part of the penalty, Genesis will give up its "BitLicense," which New York requires that cryptocurrency companies obtain to be able to offer certain services within the state. The BitLicense requires that companies comply with know-your-customer, anti-money laundering and capital requirements. Genesis has held a BitLicense since 2018.

Some former customers of the bankrupt crypto firm FTX Trading Ltd. are pushing a U.S. judge to change how they will be repaid, arguing that proposed rules unfairly leave them out of a yearlong rise in the price of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, Bloomberg News reported. More than 80 individual customers have filed letters attacking a plan to peg the value of their digital assets to the date FTX filed bankruptcy — Nov. 11, 2022 — and pay claims in U.S. dollars instead of returning the crypto coins. The customers had some form of crypto trapped on the FTX platform when company founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down amid fraud allegations. Nearly a year later, he was convicted of orchestrating a massive fraud that led to the collapse of his FTX exchange. Since the collapse, a team of bankruptcy experts, lead by chief restructuring officer John J. Ray III, has been trying to recover as much cash and as many crypto assets as possible. The team won court approval to sell crypto held on the platform in order to create a pool of billions of dollars that can be returned to customers. The size of each customer’s claim will be based on the price of the crypto coin they held on the FTX platform when the company filed its chapter 11 petition in Wilmington, Delaware. For Bitcoin holders, that means they will be owed $16,871 for each of their former coins, according to court records. The current price surged past $49,000 at one point on Thursday after trading began on the first U.S. exchange-traded funds that invest directly in the biggest cryptocurrency.

Troika Media Group is suing a former co-owner of a business it acquired in 2022, asking a bankruptcy court to halt his lawsuit against a lender key to Troika’s restructuring, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The advertising-services provider, which filed for bankruptcy in December, on Wednesday sued Thomas Marianacci, co-owner of Converge Direct, a company Troika bought for $125 million. The lawsuit asks the Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York to suspend the state-court lawsuit filed by Marianacci against lender Blue Torch Finance seeking $29 million, a suit Troika says would impede its restructuring. Troika acquired Converge Direct partly through $75 million in loans provided by Blue Torch, $29 million of which went into an escrow account to be released to Marianacci and his co-owners after certain Converge audited financial statements were delivered. The funds, however, haven’t been delivered, as the two sides disagree on whether the conditions to release them have been met. In November — prior to Troika’s bankruptcy filing — Marianacci sued to collect.

The bankrupt parent company of Silicon Valley Bank plans to turn over its remaining venture capital business to a new, creditor-backed company while it continues to fight U.S. regulators' seizure of nearly $2 billion in cash, according to court documents filed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. SVB Financial Group reached a restructuring agreement with key creditors and has the support of a coalition of banks and investment funds that collectively hold more than $2.3 billion in SVB Financial debt and preferred stock investments, the documents filed in Manhattan bankruptcy court showed. The company filed for bankruptcy in March after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, becoming the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. SVB Financial has used its bankruptcy to sell assets, spinning off its investment banking unit in June, but the restructuring agreement ends its effort to find an outside buyer for the venture capital business. "We believe that retaining SVB Capital under a reorganized company is the best path forward to maximize its value in the current environment," SVB Financial Chief Restructuring Officer William Kosturos said in a statement.

Drug manufacturer Endo International Plc won bankruptcy court permission to poll its creditors on a plan that would hand control of the business to lenders and settle opioid liabilities in deals valued at more than $600 million, Bloomberg News reported. Judge James L. Garrity Jr. said during a court hearing yesterday in New York that he’ll allow Endo creditors to vote on its restructuring plan weeks after the company announced opioid-related settlements. The judge’s approval keeps Endo on pace to emerge from chapter 11 protection in the second quarter of 2024. Endo filed for bankruptcy in August 2022 to deal with more than $8 billion in long-term debt and lawsuits alleging the company helped fuel the nation’s addiction crisis. Opioid lawsuits also drove fellow drugmakers Mallinckrodt Plc and OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP into chapter 11. Endo’s restructuring plan includes settlements with state and federal authorities, and is expected to pay individual opioid victims between $89.7 million and $119.7 million, according to court documents. The company has also agreed to pay $273 million to more than 40 states and as much as $365 million to the U.S. Justice Department. The exact amount of the payments depends on whether Endo opts to pay some settlements in full when the company leaves bankruptcy or over time, the documents show.

The Justice Department is objecting to a Texas bankruptcy judge’s recommendation that his court maintain control of a case challenging fees a former fellow judge approved to a law firm while he was involved in an undisclosed romantic relationship with a lawyer there, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The U.S. Trustee, a division of the DOJ that scrutinizes the nation’s bankruptcies, is instead pushing for a federal district court to take over the legal proceeding. Former bankruptcy judge David R. Jones resigned last year after a circuit court of appeals filed a complaint stating it found probable cause of misconduct. Southern District of Texas chief bankruptcy judge Eduardo Rodriguez in December recommended his court handle the proceeding, in which the trustee is challenging roughly $13 million of fees former bankruptcy judge David R. Jones approved for law firm Jackson Walker across 26 bankruptcy cases. Jones resigned last year after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals started an investigation and filed a complaint stating it found probable cause of misconduct surrounding Jones’ relationship with Elizabeth Freeman. She had been a Jackson Walker partner while he approved those fees, and had herself billed hours in 17 of the cases. The trustee argued in an objection filed on Thursday that “alleged years-long, intentional, and repeated ethical failures,” by Jones, Freeman, and Jackson Walker “have raised widespread and legitimate concerns about the fairness and impartiality of proceedings in the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.”

The $52 million question in Prime Capital Ventures’ bankruptcy case surrounds what happened to the money it invested in a hedge fund, The Real Deal reported. The dilemma is unfolding as Prime deals with an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding. The commercial lender’s bankruptcy was initiated by three companies that allege they were defrauded by Prime, including two real estate developers. They claim Prime accepted $22.7 million in interest-payment deposits without the commercial lender issuing them loans or repaying the deposits when asked. An attorney is serving as an interim trustee to oversee Prime’s assets as a federal judge determines whether to place Prime into chapter 7 bankruptcy or dismiss the company’s case. Tracking down the interest deposits invested into Berone Capital, however, has been no easy task. “I simply can’t find this $52 million,” Christian Dribusch said during a hearing this week. “I can’t get verification that it exists,” Dribusch added, declaring it the “biggest red flag” in front of him. Prime offers lines of credit to clients who provide 20 percent of the value of the loan in advance to cover potential interest payments. Dribusch said Prime would then invest the interest deposits with Berone under a joint venture agreement. The judge in the case is requiring Berone to disclose the value of Prime’s interest in the hedge fund and provide corroboration that the missing funds exist. Berone, which is based in Georgia, did not respond to the publication’s request for comment.