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SVB Financial Group has sued the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) to recover the $1.93 billion the regulator seized during its takeover of the failed Silicon Valley Bank in March, according to a filing in a bankruptcy court on Sunday, Reuters reported. The lack of access to the funds was impeding SVB Financial's reorganization, it said, adding the money should be generating over $100 million in annual interest, without which it would likely have to seek costly and uncertain debtor-in-possession financing. The FDIC has estimated that Silicon Valley Bank's failure drained its insurance fund by $16 billion and that while it determines SVB Financial's share of the rescue costs, it is legally able to hold the seized funds. SVB Financial said in the filing while the FDIC asserted it has claims against the company to justify its refusal to pay, it has not identified even a single claim "despite having numerous opportunities." In May, a U.S. bankruptcy judge had ordered the FDIC to return $10 million in seized tax refund checks to SVB Financial, in a broader dispute over the FDIC's efforts to recoup the cost of rescuing Silicon Valley Bank.

Celsius Network reached a $25 million deal with two large preferred shareholders, ending their litigation over claims on the company’s crypto mining business, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The settlement opens a path to ending a potentially costly fight that has been a key hurdle to its plan to transfer its bitcoin mining business to new managers and compensate customers who have digital currency trapped on the bankrupt platform. Celsius reached the settlement with WestCap Management and Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec. The settlement involves claims over the company’s U.K. affiliate, Celsius Network Ltd., and its assets including the mining business, according to a court filing Thursday by Celsius Chief Financial Officer Christopher Ferraro. The cash will come from the proceeds of a sale of a crypto services business, the court papers show. The settlement is preferable for Celsius and its customers to avoid expensive litigation that may have resulted in the preferred shareholders winning recovery of several hundred million dollars, Ferraro said in the court papers. Earlier this year, Celsius picked a group of investors led by TechCrunch co-founder Michael Arrington to run a reorganized company that will include Celsius’ mining business. Celsius customers will own nearly all of the equity in the reorganized company.

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, the largest creditor of bankrupt crypto lending firm Genesis, sued parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) and its CEO, the day after DCG missed the exchange's deadline for agreeing to a restructuring deal for the venture capital firm's troubled unit, Reuters reported. DCG and Gemini, two prominent players in the crypto industry, have clashed several times over the past few months following the collapse of Genesis, which filed for bankruptcy in January. The lawsuit alleges DCG and its CEO Barry Silbert misrepresented the accounting treatment of certain liabilities that DCG assumed from Genesis as a result of losses Genesis suffered from the collapse of Singapore-based crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital in June 2022. In a statement, a DCG spokesperson said it expects to soon bring the Genesis bankruptcy case to a close.

Johnson & Johnson wrapped up a trial today to determine if the health care giant is misusing the bankruptcy system for the second time in less than two years in a bid to force an end to about 40,000 cancer lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported. A bankrupt unit of J&J has been in federal court this week fighting a group of cancer victims who want juries around the country to decide whether their diseases were caused by tainted talc in baby powder the company sold for years. J&J is using the unit’s chapter 11 case to try to force holdouts to accept an $8.9 billion settlement offer. In the coming weeks, Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan, who is based about 25 miles from J&J’s headquarters, must decide whether to throw out the bankruptcy of LTL Management, a unit created to try to end all current and future health claims related to the talc. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ordered Kaplan to dismiss the first LTL bankruptcy. Judge Kaplan did not say when he would rule on the new bankruptcy case, but told lawyers they can submit a final round of written arguments in July. Since J&J first put LTL into bankruptcy in 2021, victims have been blocked from taking their cancer claims to trial. The bankruptcy strategy was developed after J&J lost some big trials, including one verdict in which the company was forced to pay out $2.5 billion to about 20 women.

Ameritrans Express LLC, a contract delivery service for the U.S. Postal Service, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy amid claims by some of its contractors that they have not been paid since March, Freight Waves reported. Ameritrans Express LLC, headquartered in Dumfries, Virginia, filed its petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Wednesday. The company was founded by Frederick Amankwaa in 2013 and is a contract delivery service provider for the Postal Service. Members of a Facebook group, which was set up by Ameritrans contractors in March, claim they haven’t been paid since then. One member of the group alleges she hasn’t been able to access the money she contributed to her 401(k) account.

A bankruptcy court was right to throw out a $32 million lawsuit by rapper Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson against his former law firm, a federal judge in New Haven, Connecticut, ruled on Friday, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant dismissed Jackson's claims of legal malpractice against U.S. law firm Reed Smith and its former partner Peter Raymond. Jackson had argued that Reed Smith pursued an "uninformed" legal strategy in the run-up to a trial that led to a $7 million judgment against him, and that it had a conflict of interest because another lawyer for Jackson had also represented rapper Rick Ross, a potential witness in the trial. Ross never testified. Jackson did not say how his lawyers' loyalties were divided or how the conflict led to his loss at trial, the judge said. "Without more, the court cannot conclude the conflict of interest impacted counsel's discovery strategy, or that the conflict caused Jackson to lose at trial," Bryant said. The firm represented Jackson after he was sued by a woman whose sex tape he had posted online as part of a feud with Ross. Jackson dropped Reed Smith as his counsel in March 2015. Four months later, he lost at trial and was ordered to pay $7 million in damages. Jackson filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut three days after the 2015 verdict. During the bankruptcy proceedings, Reed Smith filed a claim seeking more than $609,000 in allegedly unpaid attorney fees.

Silicon Valley Bank customers who saw their Cayman Islands deposits wiped down to zero have won a court ruling that could help them get their money back, the Wall Street Journal reported. A Cayman Islands court on Thursday approved a petition to wind up the local branch of SVB, according to Paul Kennedy, a partner at law firm Campbells, who filed the petition and attended the hearing. The petition was filed June 13 on behalf of SVB customers who collectively had around $38 million in deposits before the bank collapsed in March. That money was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which guaranteed the bank’s deposits held inside the U.S. but not those outside the country. SVB’s customers in the Cayman Islands checked their deposit balances one morning and saw they had been wiped down to zero. These customers are still expected to pay back loans they had taken from SVB, since they are now owned by First Citizens BancShares, a large U.S. regional bank that bought SVB’s loans in late March. The money they had earmarked to repay the debt is in the Cayman bank accounts, the customers said.