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A panel representing Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc.’s unsecured creditors reached a deal to resolve disputes over a restructuring plan with the bankrupt casino company and lenders controlled by billionaire Carl Icahn, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The settlement “allows us to support the plan” and opens a path for Trump Entertainment to exit bankruptcy on schedule, Karen A. Giannelli, a lawyer for the unsecured creditors’ committee. Trump Entertainment filed for bankruptcy Sept. 9 and shut the Trump Plaza days later, one of four Atlantic City casinos that closed last year as the New Jersey gambling hub was battered by competition from surrounding states. The Trump Taj Mahal remains open after weathering multiple threatened closings and has secured financing from the Icahn group to keep running until the turnaround plan takes effect. Under the plan, the Icahn lenders would get control of the two casinos through a conversion of debt into equity in the reorganized company. The unsecured creditors had opposed Trump Entertainment’s reorganization plan, backed by the Icahn lenders, because they would only get to split a $1 million fund, for a recovery of less than 1 percent, according to court documents.

Revel AC Inc., the bankrupt Atlantic City casino, is hoping to be third-time lucky after it won a court’s permission to scrap its second attempted sale and try once more to find a buyer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. If the company strikes out, it could be game over for the casino which has suffered along with the rest of the seaside New Jersey town as gamblers are drawn to venues in neighboring states. Revel representatives have said the company could be forced to liquidate if it can’t attract a buyer within five months. Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns at a hearing yesterday in Camden, New Jersey, gave the company permission to cancel its $95.4 million deal with Florida real estate investor Glenn Straub. She also ruled that Revel can keep the bidder’s $10 million deposit, which will be held in escrow.

Lawyers examining the collapse of Oscar-winning special effects studio Rhythm & Hues Inc. are blaming its former leaders for focusing on "notoriously low-margin projects" and spending the California firm's money on a startup investment that had nothing to do with winning business from Hollywood, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a lawsuit, lawyers who are trying to repay Rhythm & Hues' old debts said that former leaders made decisions that cost the firm $70 million before it filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Those leaders continued to focus on winning special effects and computer generation bids from only three film studios — Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal Studios — even though that work was tough to profit from, said the lawsuit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles.

Revel AC Inc. urged a judge to let it scrap the second attempted sale of its bankrupt Atlantic City, N.J., casino and try for a third time to find a buyer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The current proposed buyer, Florida real estate investor Glenn Straub’s Polo North Country Club Inc., has no intention of going through with the deal and Revel needs to find another suitor, the casino’s lawyers told Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns. Revel, which opened in April 2012 at a cost of $2.4 billion, filed for bankruptcy in June and closed in September as Atlantic City lost business to competitors in neighboring states. Brookfield Property Partners LP, which won a bankruptcy auction for the assets with a $110 million offer last year, walked away, leaving Polo North as the only suitor. Revel has argued it should be allowed to cancel the $95.4 million deal with Straub after a Feb. 9 deadline lapsed without a closing. Revel is also seeking to keep Polo North’s $10 million deposit. Polo North has said that it couldn’t go through with the sale before learning whether existing tenants would be allowed to stay. Judge Burns said that she will rule by Thursday after reviewing court documents and considering arguments raised at the hearing.

RadioShack Corp.’s unsecured creditors say that the retailer should have left a suicide note instead of a trail of unanswered questions about opportunities missed to save the business, the Wall Street Journal reported today. With more than 1,700 stores already being liquidated, the rest of the iconic retailer is headed toward the bankruptcy auction block. It’s a process that unsecured creditors say might have worked last year as part of a measured turnaround effort. Instead, they say, hedge funds engineered a bankruptcy crash landing designed to favor RadioShack’s top-ranking lenders, including the big shareholder that is poised to buy some of the company at a fast auction, Standard General LP.

A Utah gun manufacturer, locked in a three-year legal battle with convicted felon Ralph Merrill, has filed for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Vector Arms Corp. — the “source for the best AK47 and *UZI’s on the market” — faces big legal bills in a dispute over whether Merrill sold the company’s gun-making equipment and inventory to current owner and president Jason Maughn in 2011. That sale came after Merrill lost his firearms manufacturing license in an illegal scheme to use China-made bullets to fill a $298 million ammunition order for Afghanistan Security Forces.

Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS Group AG agreed to pay $235 million to settle a lawsuit over mortgage-backed securities issued by defunct Residential Capital LLC, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday. The three banks reached the agreement with investors led by the New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund, the union fund said in court papers Friday. The investors sued in 2008, alleging the banks failed to disclose that they’d disregarded guidelines in underwriting the securities. The damage claims were based on losses when the investments were downgraded, causing the value of the securities to collapse. The settlement must be approved by U.S. District Judge Katherine Failla in Manhattan before it can take effect. The parties told Judge Failla in November they had reached a settlement in principle, without disclosing the terms publicly. The agreement follows a $100 million settlement reached in 2013 with ResCap and a group of individual defendants. ResCap, formerly the mortgage-servicing unit of Ally Financial Inc., filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2012. Its reorganization plan was approved in December 2013.

Energy Future Holdings Corp. has asked court permission to start paying down some of its debt as it moves ahead in discussions with creditors to formulate a chapter 11 exit plan, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The proposed payoff of as much as $750 million against a $2.15 billion issue of bonds involves debt linked to the division that owns a majority stake in Oncor, a valuable Texas transmissions business. The Oncor stake is going up for auction, and "it is almost certain" that investors have more than enough collateral to secured the debt of the division, Energy Future Intermediate, company lawyers wrote.

With available funds dwindling and millions in claims pending over the January 2014 Elk River chemical leak, the Freedom Industries bankruptcy case appears to be at a crossroads, the Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported yesterday. No clear plan for resolving the case is in sight, prompting U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson to schedule a “status conference” early next month to ask various interested parties for options. Judge Pearson called the conference, set for 10 a.m. March 3, to ask for input “with respect to how this case should be administered to conclusion utilizing the limited resources available to obtain the best results for the public and parties in interest,” the judge said in a three-page order entered on Feb. 6. In the ruling, Judge Pearson noted that more than $200 million in claims have been filed against Freedom Industries, with most of that accounted for by 3,800 damage claims filed by victims of the Jan. 9, 2014, leak that contaminated the regional drinking water supply.