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Clothing firm Sunrise Brands LLC has bid for the e-commerce business and intellectual property of bankrupt U.S. retailer The Limited, challenging a $26.3 million offer from private equity firm Sycamore Partners, Reuters reported today. Sunrise Brands' bid underscores the value it sees in The Limited's online presence and intellectual property, even as the specialty retailer was forced to close its roughly 250 brick-and-mortar stores earlier this year. It filed for bankruptcy last month, with Sycamore Partners as a stalking-horse bidder. The bankruptcy auction for The Limited is scheduled for Feb. 21 in Philadelphia. While the value of Sunrise Brands' offer could not be learned, the bankruptcy court required bids topping the one from Sycamore to start at $26.5 million. 

Nasty Gal Inc. is laying off employees and closing its brick-and-mortar stores in connection with the sale of its brand name, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The online fashion retailer will shut down its two California-area stores, which opened in the past couple of years as part of the fast-growing company’s expansion. Nasty Gal plans to close these stores by Feb. 28, the expected closing date of the $20 million sale of its brand name and other intellectual property to U.K. rival Boohoo.com. In a Monday filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles, Nasty Gal sought permission to terminate the leases to its stores on Melrose Avenue and in Santa Monica. The move would save the company from monthly rent expenses of more than $125,000, it said.

Michigan Sporting Goods Distributors, which operates 68 sporting goods stores in seven states, has begun store liquidation sales at its MC Sports, MC Sporting Goods, MC Sport Outdoors Centers and Traverse Bay Tackle stores, MLive.com reported today. The liquidation sales coincide with a chapter 11 bankruptcy petition the company filed yesterday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of West Michigan. MC has been unable to compete with "online resellers, the expansion of competing distribution channels and specialty retailers and changing consumer preferences," according to the petition filed by Bruce Ullery, the company's president, CEO and largest shareholder for the past 28 years. The company lost about $5.4 million on sales of $174.6 million in its latest fiscal year, according to the petition.

Energy Future Holdings Corp. yesterday outlined a deal that resolved the biggest disputes hanging over the company as it opened a trial to confirm its plan to exit bankruptcy and be acquired by NextEra Energy Inc. for about $18 billion, Reuters reported. Dallas-based Energy Future indirectly owns Oncor, the largest distributor of power in Texas, and is using the sale to NextEra to finance its plan to repay creditors. A lawyer for Energy Future told the court at the start of yesterday’s hearing that its noteholders had agreed to a discount of what they were owed to settle a dispute that erupted in the wake of a November ruling by a U.S. Appeals Court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit had ruled that the company owed noteholders hundreds of millions of dollars in unanticipated payments for the early redemption of their securities, upsetting a prior exit plan. Energy Future's lawyer told the court the first-lien noteholders agreed to accept a 5 percent discount of the early redemption payment and second-lien noteholders agreed to a 12.5 percent discount. That freed up cash for junior creditors.

The chance that the organizer of Mavericks big wave surf contest in California could pull off a quick bankruptcy sale so the event could still take place next month is looking increasingly unlikely, the Wall Street Journal reported today. “There’s logistically no way in hell,” said Sabrina Brennan, a commissioner on the San Mateo County Harbor Commission, which issued the permit to the contest’s bankrupt organizer, Titans of Mavericks. The company and parent Cartel Management Inc., filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Jan. 31, right in the middle of the official window to host the Mavericks contest, one of surfing’s premier big-wave contests, in which some of the world’s best surfers face off on waves that can reach 60 feet in height. Brennan said that she doesn’t believe the event can happen this year, due to the length of time it would take a new owner to coordinate with authorities including the Coast Guard and California Highway Patrol. The surf contest is held on 48-hours’ notice when wind, weather and ocean swell conditions align for the perfect day. This year would have been the first event under Cartel’s permit, and Cartel has the permission for four more years. Owner Griffin Guess said that a lightning-fast sale, made cleaner by the bankruptcy process, could allow a buyer to hold the event this year prior to the March 31 deadline.

The chaos at Toshiba, the Japanese corporate giant, deepened today with its chairman resigning and the company saying that it would book a $6.3 billion loss related to its U.S. nuclear business, the Washington Post reported. Analysts are now speculating about the possibility that Toshiba, which employs almost 200,000 people in Japan and has significant investments in the United States, will have to file for bankruptcy. Toshiba executives were due to deliver the company’s quarterly earnings announcement Tuesday — the deadline for the Tokyo Stock Exchange rule to report earnings within 45 days — but they failed to show up. Instead, the company said that it was “not ready” to make the announcement and asked for another month to file. Then, after the stock market had closed, Toshiba said that it would take a $6.3 billion hit related to Westinghouse’s acquisition in December of Stone & Webster, a nuclear construction business, from Chicago Bridge & Iron in December. Shigenori Shiga, its chairman, would step down tomorrow to take responsibility for the losses, the company said. Toshiba, which bought a majority stake in Pennsylvania-based nuclear power company Westinghouse in 2006, earlier said that it had received internal information late last month about irregularities during the acquisition. It had learned that controls at Westinghouse had been “insufficient” and that the company had used “inappropriate pressure” to make the acquisition.