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Peabody Energy Corp., the world's largest private-sector coal miner, can begin seeking creditor votes for a plan to cut $5 billion of debt and exit its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a U.S. bankruptcy judge said yesterday, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Barry Schermer overruled objections from opponents including state regulators, shareholders, environmental activists and even former executives. Their complaints can still be debated at a confirmation trial on March 16. Peabody has said that it hopes to emerge from its $8 billion bankruptcy in April with a plan that will raise what lawyers called "a monster" $1.5 billion in private capital and leave it with under $2 billion of debt. Judge Schermer also approved the private capital raising over objections regarding some terms of the offering, including large fees to be awarded to certain creditors as part of the deal. Peabody's biggest creditors support the plan, which the company defended in court over competing proposals by a small group of creditors that would see Peabody exit bankruptcy with about $2.4 billion of debt.

San Antonio’s Bill Hall Jr. Trucking GP LLC filed for chapter 11 reorganization yesterday, nearly three weeks after Bankruptcy Judge Craig Gargotta dismissed the company’s previous bankruptcy case after it missed a November deadline to file a reorganization plan and proof of property insurance, the San Antonio Express-News reported today. The company reported $2.3 million in assets and $4.4 million in liabilities in the latest filing. The company owns a fleet of trucks and trailers that are operated by a related company, Bill Hall Jr. Trucking Ltd., which filed for chapter 11 in November. Trucking GP LLC entered bankruptcy in June, about three months before company manager Frances Hall, who signed the bankruptcy documents, was convicted in her husband’s 2013 murder. She was sentenced to two years in prison. The pair had started the trucking business in 1989 and had been married for 31 years.

Tangled up in the multi-million-dollar bankruptcy case of defunct retail giant Sports Authority is a pair of loans made to two former marketing executives, the Denver Business Journal reported yesterday. Englewood, Colo.-based Sports Authority, now known legally as TSA WD Holdings Inc., filed suit Jan. 17 against two of its former executives as part of the bankruptcy proceedings filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. One suit is against Jeff Schumacher, formerly Sports Authority's executive vice president and chief marketing officer, and Simon MacGibbon, also a former senior vice president at Sports Authority. Schumacher and MacGibbon had been with the company since 2009. Both left in 2011, long before it went bankrupt. The suit alleges that the two former executives were issued unvested shares in Slap Shot Holdings Corp., a subsidiary of Sports Authority. All Sports Authority's subsidiaries, including Slap Shot Holdings, closed along with Sports Authority.

A federal judge has blocked litigation that the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's firm said could undermine a $7.2 billion settlement meant to benefit the Ponzi schemer's former customers, Reuters reported yesterday. In a decision made public yesterday, U.S. District Judge Gregory Woods in Manhattan said that A&G Goldman Partnership and Pamela Goldman cannot pursue a Florida lawsuit to recover $11 billion from the estate of Jeffry Picower, who they say helped perpetuate Madoff's fraud. The decision is a victory for Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, whose settlement with Picower's estate is the largest since Madoff's fraud was uncovered in December 2008. Picard also won a permanent injunction in 2011 barring competing claims against the estate. Picower died in October 2009. In court papers, Picard said that letting the Goldman plaintiffs sue Picower's estate to recoup some $11 billion of customer losses, on top of the $7.2 billion, would create a "shadow" bankruptcy estate and undermine his authority to settle claims.

A bankruptcy judge agreed on Monday to seal the financial settlement reached in the WARN Act compensation dispute between defunct Microfibres Inc. and plaintiffs certified for a class-action lawsuit, the Winston-Salem Journal reported yesterday. The reaching of a settlement was disclosed Jan. 13. The lead plaintiff is former Winston-Salem employee Cedric Williams. Microfibres, based in Pawtucket, R.I., filed for chapter 7 voluntary bankruptcy protection in January 2016 with plans to liquidate its assets — the same day it closed its plants in Winston-Salem and Pawtucket. The local workforce was at 270 employees in 2004. About 125 employees in Winston-Salem and 60 in Pawtucket were projected to be covered by federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, protections. The plaintiffs asked for at least $1.5 million in damages and priority administrative claim status for the first $12,745 of each employee’s claim. Williams filed the sealed request with Judge Diane Finkle, with no objections from the bankruptcy trustee, Joseph DiOrio, who had asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.

Judges in Delaware and Canada yesterday approved a plan to pay more than $7 billion to creditors of Nortel Networks, ending years of litigation over the former telecommunications company that filed for bankruptcy in 2009, Reuters reported. The rulings by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross in Wilmington, Delaware and Frank Newbould of the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto ends one of the longest and most expensive chapter 11 cases, marked by battles over funds raised by the company's liquidation. The coordinated ruling yesterday will allow repayment of vendors, retirees in Canada, government agencies and investment funds later this year.

Peabody Energy Corp., the world's largest private sector coal producer, stood by its current bankruptcy exit plan, saying yesterday in court papers that alternative proposals threatened to send the company back into chapter 11, Reuters reported. Peabody's plan to slash $5 billion of debt has the support of the vast majority of its creditors but is opposed by Indiana, Missouri, environmental groups and certain former employees, creditors and shareholders. A small committee of objecting creditors has sent Peabody a series of alternative proposals to its own plan, which calls for the coal producer to emerge from bankruptcy in April with about $2 billion in debt. In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis, Lazard's Tyler Cowan, who has been advising Peabody on its restructuring, said the alternative plans contained "major flaws" in terms of valuation, debt capacity and feasibility. Given the "cyclical and volatile nature" of the coal industry, Cowan said that Peabody's debt should not exceed $2 billion given a long list of risks including China's coal policy, U.S. natural gas prices, and financing for environmental cleanup and retirement obligations.