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A group of SandRidge Energy Inc. shareholders is accusing the oil and gas producer of grossly understating its value, threatening to derail a prepackaged bankruptcy agreement with its lenders, Reuters reported yesterday. The shareholders' court filing on Wednesday comes before a hearing next week, when the company will ask a judge to approve the Oklahoma City company's reorganization plan. Shareholders are hoping to prove SandRidge may be the rare bankruptcy where a company's assets are valuable enough to repay creditors and have money left over for stockholders, according to their bankruptcy court filing. SandRidge filed the pre-packaged bankruptcy pact in May to restructure roughly $4 billion of debt, joining a long list of oil-and-gas producers hit by a deep crash in U.S. energy prices. The company's financial adviser, Houlihan Lokey, estimated the reorganized company's enterprise value, generally a measure of market capitalization plus debt minus cash, at $1.0 billion to $1.3 billion. The shareholders said that an analysis by energy consultant SSR put the value at almost three times that amount.

Rio de Janeiro prosecutors have asked the court supervising Oi SA's bankruptcy proceedings to suspend a shareholders meeting scheduled for Sept. 8 to give the Brazilian phone carrier time to negotiate with a minority investor, Reuters reported yesterday. The purpose of the meeting is to decide on changes to Oi's board as proposed by activist minority investor Société Mondiale, according to a statement yesterday. Aside from replacing all of the board members appointed by majority Oi shareholder Pharol, Société Mondiale proposed a lawsuit against current and former managers of the company for alleged losses imposed on the carrier as a result of their actions, according to court filings. Prosecutor Márcio Souza Guimarães said before any shareholder action can be taken, there should be "mediation" between the dissenting parties.

TerraForm Power Inc., a public holding company founded and controlled by bankrupt clean-energy giant SunEdison Inc., reached a deal with bondholders to buy more time to file its delayed 2015 annual report, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. A unit of the yieldco, TerraForm Power Operating LLC, persuaded subsets of bondholders to extend the deadline to file the 2015 report and its first-quarter report to Dec. 6, according to a statement on Tuesday. In May, bondholders slapped Bethesda, Md.-based TerraForm Power with notices of default for failing to produce the annual report. That left the yieldco with about 90 days to file or extend the deadline -- or face a demand for accelerated payments.  TerraForm, which owns operating wind and solar farms, has blamed SunEdison for its inability to file. SunEdison, it has said, provides systems needed to complete the reports. In March -- about a month before it filed for bankruptcy protection -- SunEdison attributed its own delayed 2015 report to “deficient information technology controls” from a new reporting system.

Several dozen creditors of Providence Financial Investments attended a public hearing in Miami this week in the bankruptcy case, as pressure mounts internationally against the Miami-based investment company that allegedly took in millions of dollars from hundreds of investors from around the world before declaring itself insolvent, the Miami Herald reported today. The company filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy on July 28 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of Florida after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved to shut the company down in June, calling the investment scheme involving factoring in Brazil an “ongoing fraudulent and unregistered securities offering.” The securities that offered annual returns of 12 percent to 13 percent had not been registered with the SEC, and brokers selling them were unregistered, the agency said in its complaint seeking a jury trial. In addition, Providence hasn’t accounted for the money it has collected — about $64 million in U.S. investors’ money alone, the SEC alleges — and its poor financial condition wasn’t disclosed to its investors, while it continued to solicit the nest eggs of more than 400 investors around the country.

Investors in the high-end denim brand Imogene + Willie are trying to force the Nashville, Tenn., retailer into bankruptcy, accusing the founders of misspending company money on luxury clothing items, spa visits and home renovation projects, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers, investors asked a bankruptcy judge to replace Imogene + Willie founders Matt and Carrie Eddmenson with new leadership, saying that the couple spent a $1.5 million cash investment “on themselves to support a lavish lifestyle of personal indulgence while failing to meet any of the critical deadlines for developing a wholesale business.” Founded in 2009, Imogene + Willie designs upscale jeans that quickly became popular with high-end boutiques across the country. The request for new leadership, filed on Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Denver, came from businessman Robert Lamey and his wife, Paige Heid, who invested in the jeans company in July 2013. They are also trying to force the company into chapter 11 protection by filing what is called an involuntary petition, an action that gives the company 20 days to respond. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

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. 

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Sports Authority executives on Wednesday won the right to collect bonuses after a bankruptcy liquidation that erased some 14,000 jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath cleared the company to pay up to $1.5 million to three unnamed senior executives over the protests of a federal bankruptcy watchdog, who called the bonus proposal unfair. With an estimated $400 million worth of merchandise to sell and hundreds of stores to close in a few months, Sports Authority’s bankruptcy sparked one of the largest retail liquidations, the company said. Many suppliers of the defunct athletic-gear seller are getting only fractional recoveries for the goods they shipped to Sports Authority. The Englewood, Colo., company filed for bankruptcy in March and shut the doors on hundreds of stores for good at the end of July. Senior executives who are collecting full pay are seeking to be paid extra for doing “what they are required to do,” said Hannah McCollum, lawyer for U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara, the Justice Department officer who argued against the bonuses.

Casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. has until at least Oct. 5 before it may have to face lawsuits that could force the company into bankruptcy alongside its operating unit, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman yesterday agreed to halt the lawsuits while the operating unit appeals a lower-court ruling that favored bondholders seeking to enforce more than $11 billion in claims. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (CEOC) which filed for chapter 11 protection in January 2015, will return to court on Oct. 5 to argue that the judge overseeing its bankruptcy erred when he lifted the lawsuit shield last week. Judge Gettleman said that he would probably decide at the October hearing whether to overturn the bankruptcy judge, but he warned CEOC that it faced an “uphill” fight. The temporary halt to the lawsuits means Caesars won’t immediately face potential losses in a group of cases that have been winding their way through courts in Delaware and New York for more than a year.

Stock investors are lately demanding — and winning — the chance to fight for a recovery in bankruptcy, according to an analysis in today’s Wall Street Journal. In chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganizations, shareholders don’t get paid unless companies pay off all their debts, which typically means they don’t get paid. Rather than accept defeat, however, shareholders in energy, coal and other commodities-focused companies are fighting for a voice, and possibly a recovery, in some of the biggest bankruptcies that have been filed over the past couple of years. “Equity is just not as willing to walk away as they once were,” said DLA Piper restructuring lawyer Thomas Califano. In most of these cases, shareholders are wiped out as companies reorganize by giving equity to creditors or selling their assets at prices too low to cover their debts. “You just feel exploited when your life savings are about to be taken from you,” said Kristen Plaisance, who owns stock in bankrupt Texas oil and gas driller Energy XXI Ltd. Energy XXI’s shareholders allege in bankruptcy court filings that management wrongly marked down the value of the company before planning a restructuring that would hand control of the company to bondholders while letting current management keep their jobs and collect bonuses. In June, Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur granted Energy XXI investors an official committee.

Maxus Energy Corp. is defending a $130 million settlement with its corporate parent over responsibility for the cleanup of New Jersey’s contaminated Passaic River, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Maxus was one of dozens of companies tagged with blame for discharging hazardous substances into the river decades ago. The company filed for bankruptcy in June after striking a bargain with owner YPF SA over its corporate parent’s alleged liability for the cleanup. Maxus’s deal with YPF, Argentina’s state-owned oil company, triggered a protest from Occidental Petroleum Corp.’s chemical subsidiary, known as OxyChem, which has been sparring with YPF for years over who should be on the hook for cleaning up the river. Lawyers for Maxus on Monday acknowledged the settlement “has engendered controversy” but maintained it was the best option “when compared to the risks of losing everything at trial and garnering no value for the debtors’ creditors.”