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Lenders owed more than $700 million have called for an independent trustee to take over a bankruptcy liquidation of China Fishery Group, which they have accused of stalling efforts to repay them, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. In court papers filed on Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, lawyers for the lender group said they see “grave risk” in allowing the family that founded and controls the company — the Ng family — to remain in charge. “The need for transparency and independent oversight has been a substantial concern of the [lenders] for some time,” they said. “The stakeholders have lost all faith in the Ng family properly using chapter 11 to best serve creditors’ interests.” Ng Puay Yee, the company’s chief executive officer, has hinted that lenders may try to wrest control of the company away from its current management. In court papers filed in June when China Fishery sought chapter 11 protection, Ng said his business was “in jeopardy as a result of the aggressive and improper acts by certain lenders.”

International authorities are participating in investigations into Miami-based Providence Financial Investments and its affiliates, which took in the life savings of hundreds of U.S. investors in an investment scheme involving Brazilian “factoring,” the Miami Herald reported today. The company filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection last week following actions by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to shut it down. On Monday, the Royal Court of Guernsey ordered the appointment of “administrative managers” for Providence Investment Funds and its manager company, Providence Investment Management International Limited. Guernsey, a resort area and financial center, is one of the British Channel Islands where Providence operations were based and where it was actively soliciting investors until late July. The court was acting on the “urgent” request of the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, Guernsey’s regulatory body, and followed the fund’s suspension and resignations of Providence’s directors there on Aug. 4 and 5, less than a week after the company’s U.S. Miami-based unit declared bankruptcy. Read more. 

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Rincon Island LP, an oil and gas production company, has filed for bankruptcy protection to block the state of California from forcing the company to perform extensive remediation on its wells amid environmental concerns, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The company filed for chapter 11 protection on Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas as California’s Natural Resources Agency issued an emergency order mandating the environmental safety work on Rincon Island’s idle properties, including installing plugs and shut-off valves on certain wells. The order requires Rincon to pay for the extensive remediation. The report prompted a call from state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson urging California to close the facility completely. She cited the lack of progress Rincon Island has made to address safety troubles. “Despite being warned of this and other issues on Rincon Island on numerous occasions — including deteriorated wellheads and a lack of regular maintenance — RILP has consistently failed to meet milestones,” Sen. Jackson said in her letter. Rincon Island said in a statement that it filed for bankruptcy “in order to protect its key oil and gas leases from a wrongful attempted termination by the state of California. The partnership will be reorganized in order to ensure its long-term financial success.” Read more. (Subscription required.)

Get a better understanding of what happens when an oil, gas or other natural resources company goes bankrupt. Order your copy of ABI's revised and expanded When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy, Second Edition. 

Gawker Media LLC is in the "final stages” of settling a defamation suit brought by British tabloid The Daily Mail, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A lawyer for Gawker, Gregg Galardi, didn’t disclose the terms of the settlement, but such a deal could resolve one of a long list of defamation lawsuits Gawker is facing from subjects of its past articles. The acknowledgment of an expected deal with the Daily Mail comes amid preliminary settlement talks between Gawker and former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan to try to resolve the largest of the publisher’s legal woes. A $140 million invasion of privacy judgment stemming from a suit brought by Terry Bollea, Hogan’s real name, pushed Gawker into chapter 11 earlier this year. Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder and chief executive, is liable for $10 million of the judgment and jointly liable for another $115 million. He sought bankruptcy protection earlier this month.

Gawker Media Group is engaged in preliminary talks with the former professional wrestler known as Hulk Hogan to reach a settlement over a $140 million invasion-of-privacy judgment that forced the digital media company into bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The talks come a week ahead of a court-administered auction that will see Gawker’s founder, Nick Denton, lose control of the company he started 14 years ago. In March, a Florida jury found Gawker and Denton guilty of invading the former wrestling champion’s privacy by publishing a video of him having sex with the wife of a radio shock jock. Gawker is appealing the decision.

A federal judge rejected PricewaterhouseCoopers' bid to dismiss a $1 billion lawsuit accusing the accounting firm of professional malpractice for helping cause the October 2011 bankruptcy of MF Global Holdings Ltd., a brokerage once run by former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, Reuters reported on Friday. In a 69-page decision made public on Friday, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan said that there remained open questions concerning whether PwC's alleged bad accounting advice was a substantial cause of MF Global's rapid demise. "PwC has not satisfied its burden of demonstrating the absence of any genuine issue of material fact," Judge Marrero wrote. Corzine is not a defendant in the lawsuit, which was filed in March 2014 by MF Global's bankruptcy plan administrator. "PwC stands by its work for MF Global," James Cusick, a lawyer for the firm, said in a statement. "MF Global's collapse was caused by its own business decisions and adverse market events, not any accounting determination." The decision keeps alive one of the last remaining pieces of litigation relating to MF Global's Oct. 31, 2011 bankruptcy. PwC in April 2015 reached a $65 million cash settlement with former shareholders and bondholders, in which it denied wrongdoing. MF Global officials and bank underwriters have also settled with investors. Customers have been made whole.