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A struggling iron ore mining project in Minnesota’s Iron Range is suing Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. for allegedly thwarting its efforts to emerge from bankruptcy by pressuring contractors and customers to cease business with the smaller company, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Friday. The lawsuit, filed Thursday by Mesabi Metallics Co. LLC, alleges Cleveland-Cliffs engaged in an “anticompetitive scheme to thwart competition by threatening contractors, local businesses and customers” to obstruct completion of the project and thwart Mesabi’s plan to refinance its business. Mesabi said in its lawsuit that some of its construction, engineering and legal contractors resigned unexpectedly in recent months. The lawsuit said that one longtime contractor, Barr Engineering Co., abruptly resigned in August because of alleged “threats and pressures from Cliffs … that it would cease doing current and future work with Barr” if it continued working on the Minnesota project.

The trustee liquidating part of New York taxi mogul Evgeny “Gene” Freidman’s holdings has found a bidder offering $7.7 million ahead of a planned auction to help repay former lender Citibank, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bankruptcy trustee Greg Messer said in court papers that a stalking horse, or lead, bidder had offered $167,500 for each of 46 taxi medallions owned by Freidman’s companies that have been stranded in the two-year-old bankruptcy case. The stalking-horse offer, which requires bankruptcy court approval, would put a floor under the medallions’ price at a public auction scheduled to take place Sept. 18 in East Elmhurst, N.Y. Details about the bidder, MGPE Inc., weren’t available in court papers. Bankruptcy Judge Carla Craig has scheduled a Sept. 25 hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn to consider the auction results.

Sempra Energy took a step forward yesterday in its pursuit of Oncor, the electricity transmissions business that has had takeover offers from a series of suitors, including, most recently, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi signed off on Sempra's proposed acquisition, which still needs approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas. State regulators have squashed two earlier attempted buyouts of Oncor, one of the largest electricity transmissions businesses in the country. Oncor is owned largely by Energy Future Holdings Corp., a Dallas power company that has been operating under bankruptcy protection since 2014. Judge Sontchi yesterday authorized Energy Future to agree to sell its 80 percent stake in Oncor to Sempra. Sempra's paying $9.45 billion for the Oncor stake, compared with the $9 billion offered by Berkshire Hathaway. Additionally, Sempra is in line for a $190 million breakup fee if the deal sours, compared with the $270 million breakup fee Berkshire was asking.

The trustee recovering money for Bernard Madoff’s victims yesterday announced his biggest settlement in six years, recouping $687 million from an Irish fund that began sending client money to the imprisoned Ponzi schemer in the 1990s, Reuters reported. Thema International Fund Plc’s payment would boost the recovery by the trustee Irving Picard to about $12.7 billion, or more than 72 percent of the $17.5 billion in principal he has said Madoff’s customers lost. The payment represents transfers that Dublin-based Thema received from Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in the six years before Madoff’s fraud was uncovered in December 2008, plus 19.26 percent of earlier withdrawals. Yesterday’s settlement requires approval by Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein. A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 25. Read more. 

For a further analysis of commercial fraud, make sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Fraud and Forensics: Piercing Through the Deception in a Commercial Fraud Case. 

Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn yesterday tossed a lawsuit filed by creditors of LyondellBasell Industries AF to claw back more than $5.9 billion the chemical company’s shareholders received from a failed 2007 leveraged buyout, the Wall Street Journal reported. Judge Glenn in a brief, three-page order dismissed with prejudice a lawsuit brought by a trustee on behalf of creditors of LyondellBasell’s bankruptcy. The creditors were seeking to claw back the billions in cash from hundreds of former shareholders — pension and mutual funds, Wall Street banks, hedge funds and retail investors — of Lyondell Chemical Co. The creditors had also sued billionaire deal maker Leonard Blavatnik over the 2007 merger of Lyondell Chemical and Basell AF that created what was then one of the largest chemical companies in the world.

Owners of about 16.5 million Honda and Acura vehicles with potentially defective Takata air bags are eligible for financial aid in getting their cars fixed and up to $500 in compensation under the terms of a new consumer settlement, <em>USA Today</em> reported on Friday. Japanese automaker Honda agreed to a $605 million class-action settlement covering economic losses suffered by the U.S. owners of vehicles fitted with Takata air bags. Victims of the defect will receive compensation from a separate fund. The deal comes after similar agreements between Takata air bag vehicle owners and Nissan, Toyota, BMW, Mazda and Subaru.

Two affiliates of Lehman Brothers, the U.S. investment bank that collapsed in 2008 and fueled an economic crisis, filed for chapter 11 protection on Thursday, a reminder of the complexity of unwinding a global financial institution, Reuters reported on Friday. The two affiliates, Lehman Brothers U.K. Holdings (Delaware) Inc. and Lehman Pass-Through Securities Inc., were put into bankruptcy as part of a deal that will generate $485 million cash for the Lehman estate, according to court documents. The affiliates own residential mortgage-backed securities, real estate and stock in First Data Corp. (FDC.N), which helps process credit card transactions, among other assets, according to papers filed in the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan. Affiliates of Brookfield Asset Management Inc. of Canada (BAMa.TO) are buying stakes in the Lehman affiliates, which were put into bankruptcy to carry out the deal. Administrators have spent years winding down Lehman’s holdings and have distributed around $147 billion to creditors, according to court records. More than 100 people still work for Lehman and the case remains one of the largest U.S. bankruptcies, even after the distributions to creditors. The estate holds $7 billion of assets, much of it cash, as it works through hundreds of remaining creditor claims and legal disputes.