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The relatives of former billionaire entrepreneur Samuel Wyly can’t expect a thaw any time soon in an order freezing their assets in connection with a jury’s finding that the family’s patriarch ran an offshore stock-fraud scheme, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. The order, temporarily locking up the assets of Wyly, his late brother Charles and 16 family members, doesn’t violate federal bankruptcy law, an appeals court ruled on Friday in a win for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Wylys face a demand from the government that they forfeit money illegally reaped from the 13-year fraud operation.

Unions representing the company's workers say they are in danger of being shortchanged, while shareholders of the old AMR Corp. get another generous payoff, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Friday. Hundreds of millions of dollars of valuable stock is still stored up in bankruptcy reserve accounts, waiting for a final reckoning of the accounts from the 2011 bankruptcy of AMR, parent of American Airlines. AMR's bankruptcy was a rare case that produced value to spare for shareholders. According to court papers, investors in the old equity received more than $9.5 billion of new American shares in the four months following AMR's bankruptcy exit. Unions representing pilots, flight attendants and other workers of AMR Corp. say that they are being asked to take a haircut when the remaining stock is handed out while investors in the old equity get more than their fair share. American spokesman Casey Norton said that the company will respond with a court filing and is reviewing a bankruptcy court motion the unions filed on Tuesday, criticizing the company's distribution plan.

A little more than a year after the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis announced a new child-protection plan, developed as part of a settlement in a clergy sex abuse lawsuit, the archdiocese has unveiled another landmark plan, the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press reported on Saturday. The plan is the result of a settlement agreement between the archdiocese and the county attorney's office, which filed civil charges last year in conjunction with criminal charges against the archdiocese. Some elements of the plan include:

- Broader background checks for clergy and church volunteers.

- Mandatory and ongoing child-protection training.

- Mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse to law enforcement.

- Creation of a fund for victim counseling.

As part of the agreement, the civil case will be put on hold for three years as the archdiocese implements its plan, returning to court with progress reports every six months. At the end of the three-year period, if the archdiocese has held up its end of the deal, the county attorney's office would dismiss its case.

A television executive who said he helped Emmy Award-winning producer Mark Burnett re-pitch the concept for “Survivor” after major networks snubbed it is fighting to collect millions of dollars of the reality show’s profits, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers, Layne Leslie Britton says that he is owed at least $14 million in TV show revenue — an amount that was supposed to flow from entertainment consultant Conrad Riggs and his company, Cloudbreak Entertainment Inc. Riggs, who was getting a cut of Burnett’s “Survivor” profits, broke his promise to share some of that money, Britton’s lawyers said. The legal battle, waged in state court since 2012, is now in the hands of a bankruptcy judge after Mr. Riggs put Cloudbreak into chapter 11 protection on Dec. 1, just a few hours before a trial on the dispute was scheduled to start.

American Apparel Inc. founder Dov Charney’s attempt to return to the company moved a step closer after firms backing him made nonbinding offers to buy the bankrupt retailer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. More than one entity working with Charney have signed nonbinding letters of interest — which include the value of potential offers — and nondisclosure agreements to review the retailer’s financial documents. Charney said earlier this month that he was working with a financial adviser on an offer and that he’d been in talks with potential financial partners. He’s been trying to hatch a return to American Apparel since he was fired last year from his dual roles of chief executive officer and chairman following allegations of misconduct. Last year, Irving Place Capital was working with Charney and submitted a letter of interest with an offer price, but a deal stalled. American Apparel, which entered bankruptcy in October, said there’s currently no progress on a potential bid and no transaction to consider.

Gun maker Colt Defense LLC won confirmation on Wednesday of its chapter 11 plan, the end point of a contentious bankruptcy case, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported yesterday. Most objections were swept aside in deals in advance of the hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., where Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein granted approval to the workout plan. Colt filed for chapter 11 protection in June, blaming the loss of key military business and an overload of debt. In September, Colt reclaimed a U.S. Army contract to provide M4 rifles, an opportunity to tap into a planned $212 million of government spending in the coming years.

An examiner needs to be appointed in the bankruptcy of Samson Resources Corp. to look into the theft of nearly $2 million from the energy company and allegations it short-changed landowners on royalty payments, according to the U.S. government's bankruptcy watchdog, Reuters reported yesterday. Acting U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara said in court papers filed on Tuesday that about $1.8 million of Samson's estate funds were stolen last month when an email account of its chief financial officer was used to direct an employee to wire the money to an account at a Regions Bank in Birmingham, Ala. About $1.5 million has been recovered by Regions Bank and the remaining $300,000 may be covered by Samson's insurance, Vara said, adding that Samson is investigating who may have gained access to Chief Financial Officer Philip Cook's email account. Vara also said in the court papers that his office has been contacted by various landowners regarding royalties they get from Samson for oil and natural gas leases. They assert that Samson "over a period of years" intentionally and fraudulently miscalculated royalty payments, Vara said.

Millennium Health LLC’s chapter 11 plan was confirmed on Monday, but it was almost immediately challenged with an appeal from Voya Investment Management, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Voya, formerly ING’s U.S. arm, is one of dozens of financial institutions that bought into a nearly $1.8 billion financing for Millennium in April 2014. A little over a year later, the drug-testing company revealed it was threatened with the loss of the right to bill government-funded programs due to fraud accusations from the Justice Department. Voya didn’t buy into the chapter 11 plan that was designed to provide funds to pay Millennium’s settlement with regulators. The lender is seeking a fast trip to federal appeals court to argue the plan unfairly blocks Voya’s right to sue Millennium’s departing owners. During confirmation hearings last week, Millennium and the lenders that supported the plan said repeatedly that the company’s survival is on the line. If Millennium can’t come up with funds to cover a $256 million settlement of the fraud charges by Dec. 30, the Justice Department could move to strip the laboratory testing company of its government billing privileges, lawyers said.

A union lawyer negotiating with Walter Energy Inc. said that miners would rather gamble jobs at the bankrupt coal producer than make additional concessions, a stance the judge called “a game of chicken,” Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Walter Energy filed for bankruptcy in July and is set to put its assets up for auction Jan. 5. As an opening bid, lenders have offered to exchange $1.25 billion in debt and pay $5.4 million in cash. That agreement hinges on a consensual resolution with unions or court approval to reject collective-bargaining agreements. The union’s lawyer told Bankruptcy Judge Tamara O. Mitchell yesterday that issues involving worker safety were too important to bargain away. Judge Mitchell cautioned that under such a strategy, the union “stands to lose everything.” If the union wins, “the buyer walks because there’s no sale and then all the employees are out of a job, the mines close down” and there won’t be benefits for anyone, Judge Mitchell said. Sharon Levine, the attorney for the United Mine Workers of America, said that the union’s stance is “not a threat.”

Molycorp Inc. is moving forward with a restructuring plan that some creditors said would benefit its senior lender, Oaktree Capital Management LLC, after a mediation aimed at devising a new plan failed, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The parties couldn’t agree to terms on how to handle a sale of assets, and, as a result, the company’s existing restructuring plan remains in effect. Creditors of the bankrupt rare-earths miner had been engaged in negotiations over the past two weeks after some lenders accused Molycorp of running a “specious sale process” that benefited Oaktree. The contending creditor groups, which included JHL Capital Group LLC, the largest holder of the company’s senior bonds, maintained that the process gave Oaktree veto power and made it impossible to persuade potential buyers to join an auction. The mediation’s collapse means the contending creditors now must try to devise a new sales process if they seek to challenge the current plan as the bidding continues.