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A public trustee will be allowed to look at bank statements, cancelled checks and documents related to a $13 million loan taken out by former Alaska Dispatch News owner Alice Rogoff, the Alaska Journal of Commerce reported. At a Jan. 18 hearing, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gary Spraker said that the permission comes with conditions to protect confidentiality, but he ordered that outright objections to looking at “certain” documents on the part of Rogoff’s Northrim Bank attorney are too vague and need to be spelled out more specifically. He said he’s “not going to rule on the question en masse.” The bankruptcy case, filed as a chapter 11 reorganization on Aug. 12, 2017, and converted to a chapter 7 liquidation after the sale of the company Sept. 11, is still in the discovery phase to find assets for repaying Rogoff’s $2.3 million in debts to dozens of local and national businesses and individuals.

A Suffield, Conn.-based marketing company that has received $3.5 million in state economic development loans since 2009 filed a Jan. 8 petition for chapter 11 protection from creditors, while it reorganizes in hopes of getting out of a cash bind it attributes to financial problems affecting retail stores nationwide that are its customers, the Hartford Courant reported. Windsor Marketing Group. Inc. and its president and owner, Kevin F. Armata, told the U.S. Bankruptcy Court that without chapter 11 relief the company “will suffer irreparable harm in that it will be forced to cease operations, thereby destroying its going concern value for creditors … and eliminating vital jobs for its employees.” However, the company gave a more optimistic assessment yesterday. “While we are re-organizing, we are proceeding with business as usual, and...[w]e fully expect to emerge from Chapter 11 as soon as practicable, stronger than ever,” Chief Marketing Officer Steve Thomas said. Windsor Marketing, which marked 40 years in business in 2016, says that it has more than 3,000 customers, including major retail chains — to which it sells “in-store marketing” materials such as high-definition “merchandising signage” to grab customers’ attention, steer them to product displays, and stimulate “impulse purchases.” he bankruptcy case, moving forward in its early stage, has caused concern at the state Department of Economic and Community Development — which loaned the company $2 million in 2009 and another $1.5 million in 2015 for expansion of the company's headquarters.

The battle for control of Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC, the bankrupt real estate operation caught up in an alleged $1 billion Ponzi scheme, ended Tuesday with a settlement that includes the resignation of the turnaround management team hired by ex-chief executive and accused fraudster Robert Shapiro, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. New board members of the embattled company include Michael Goldberg, a Florida lawyer who specializes in cleaning up after Ponzi scheme fraud, and Freddie Reiss and Richard Nevins, both turnaround executives with decades of experience. Shapiro, who has denied the Securities and Exchange Commission’s claims he ran Woodbridge as a Ponzi scheme, will no longer have influence on the company’s affairs under the deal. His alleged victims, including thousands of elderly people who plunged big chunks of their life savings into Woodbridge, will get more help advocating for their interests in the bankruptcy case, as part of a settlement.