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Bankrupt U.S. coal producer Peabody Energy Corp., which is looking to sell assets in Australia, is seeking permission for Lazard Freres & Co LLC to provide merger and acquisition services for its foreign unit, according to court papers filed on Thursday, Reuters reported. Lazard has been serving as investment banker to Peabody since it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, but the engagement did not cover merger and acquisition services, which the world's largest private-sector coal company said it now needs. Peabody filed for protection from its creditors after a sharp drop in coal prices left it unable to service $10.1 billion in debt, much of which was incurred to finance an expansion in Australia.

Thousands of empty shipping containers, stranded in Southern California after the bankruptcy of South Korean ocean carrier Hanjin Shipping Co., may now have a way to get back to Asia, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Port of Long Beach and Total Terminals International LLC (TTI) — which runs port terminals for Hanjin, including its Southern California operation in Long Beach — have arranged for a container ship to remove 4,300 containers that have been sitting in container yards and warehouse lots since the bankruptcy filing. Port officials said on Thursday that they expect the ship to arrive in the next several days. TTI will load containers onto the ship at cost and the port has agreed to waive wharfage fees. For weeks after Hanjin entered bankruptcy proceedings, most major West Coast ports were turning away loaded and empty Asia-bound containers owned or leased by Hanjin. Freight-handling businesses scrambled to rebook outbound loads on other carriers, but most of the empty containers stayed put.

Victims of Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme will receive another $32.1 million under a new settlement over the swindler's ties to Cohmad Securities Corp, whose clients invested more than $1 billion with him, Reuters reported Friday. Irving Picard, the trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, on Friday announced that the settlement with the estate of former Cohmad Chairman Maurice "Sonny" Cohn, his widow Marilyn Cohn, and their daughter Marcia Cohn, who was Cohmad's chief operating officer. Though Cohmad is insolvent, Picard said that he plans to keep pursuing claims against six other individuals who received "substantial fees" for helping Cohmad raise money for Madoff. 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. 

A federal judge on Friday said that investors seeking to hold banks liable for helping underwrite more than $7.7 billion of mortgage-backed securities from the now-bankrupt subprime lender NovaStar Mortgage Inc. may pursue their claims as a group, Reuters reported today. In a 33-page decision, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan granted class certification to investors led by the New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund against units of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Deutsche Bank AG and Wells Fargo & Co. Several former NovaStar executives are also defendants. NovaStar specialized in lower-quality residential mortgages, including many packaged into securities issued in 2006 and 2007.

As auto supplier Takata Corp. prepares for a possible U.S. bankruptcy filing, potential bidders are poring over a recent U.S. court ruling that could expose a buyer to liability for the company's defective air bags, sources have told Reuters. Takata faces potentially billions of dollars in costs from the world's largest automotive recall, stemming from millions of its air bags that were equipped with malfunctioning inflators. The Japanese company has said that it is seeking a financial backer. But interested bidders, if the parts maker goes up for sale, want Takata to put its U.S. business into bankruptcy first. General Motors filed for chapter 11 in 2009, selling its best assets to "new GM," scrubbed free of billions of dollars of debt, which enabled the company to withstand an economic crisis. In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that General Motors Co., the "new GM," could be sued over faulty ignition switches made by "old GM." "What that says to me: buyer beware," said Henry Jaffe of Pepper Hamilton in Wilmington, Del., who represents debtors and creditors. Jaffe, who took part in a special abiLIVE webinar with Greenberg Traurig, LLP’s John Hutton to examine the ruling, said that the Second Circuit’s decision could undercut what bidders are willing to pay for Takata. Read more. 

Click here to watch the abiLIVE webinar. http://cle.abi.org/product/no-cle-abi-live-2nd-circuit-decision-gm-incr…

Bankruptcy Court Judge Stuart Bernstein yesterday authorized creditors of Gawker Media Group to begin voting on its debt-repayment plan, a day after the former publisher unveiled the settlement of a yearslong legal battle with former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan that put both the company and its founder in bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Following a hearing in Manhattan, Judge Bernstein said that Gawker could solicit votes on the plan, which describes both the company’s intent to pay out $31 million to the retired wrestler as well as provisions that would allot millions of dollars more to other creditors. Since filing for bankruptcy in June, Gawker sold off most of its assets to a unit of Univision Communications Inc., which renamed them Gizmodo Media Group. The $135 million sale put Gawker’s editorial operations out the reach of the crippling defamation lawsuits brought by Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, and others and provided the funds needed to settle those lawsuits.

A fight is brewing in U.S. court that threatens to derail a settlement deal struck last month to conclude a seven-year battle over divvying up Nortel Networks Ltd.’s remaining $7.3-billion (U.S.) in assets, the Globe and Mail reported today. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has objected to the settlement plan, saying it may not receive enough to cover its $708-million claim, which represents the shortfall in Nortel’s U.S. pension plan after the company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2009. Nortel’s U.S. division has 22,000 pension plan members. PBGC said in a court filing it will “defend its claims aggressively” to ensure it receives the highest possible payout, and warns the settlement will not achieve the desired resolution of the case but will instead “needlessly instigate a lengthy and bitter dispute.”