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South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co. filed for receivership today, as shipping companies world-wide grapple with overcapacity amid a slump in global trade, the Wall Street Journal reported. The filing with the Seoul Central District Court came just a day after the company’s creditors discontinued providing a lifeline after financial assistance of more than 1 trillion won ($896 million) failed to keep it afloat. The court will soon determine whether Hanjin, the country’s largest container operator by capacity, should be liquidated or given a chance to survive after restructuring, the company said.

The owner of sports bar chains Fox & Hound and Champps closed 25 locations, even as the company received a lifeline that will enable it to operate long enough to be put up for sale, according to bankruptcy filings and the company, National Restaurant News reported yesterday. Kelly Investment Group, a private-equity firm out of California that specializes in restructurings, has emerged to keep the chains’ owner, Last Call Guarantor LLC, from being shut down. Fun Eats and Drinks LLC, a Kelly subsidiary, recently acquired the rights to $75 million in first lien debt that Last Call had owed to Antares Capital. Kelly Investment then agreed to provide $5.4 million in financing to enable the company to continue operating through an expected auction next month, according to the filings.

Casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. has until at least Oct. 5 before it may have to face lawsuits that could force the company into bankruptcy alongside its operating unit, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman yesterday agreed to halt the lawsuits while the operating unit appeals a lower-court ruling that favored bondholders seeking to enforce more than $11 billion in claims. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. (CEOC) which filed for chapter 11 protection in January 2015, will return to court on Oct. 5 to argue that the judge overseeing its bankruptcy erred when he lifted the lawsuit shield last week. Judge Gettleman said that he would probably decide at the October hearing whether to overturn the bankruptcy judge, but he warned CEOC that it faced an “uphill” fight. The temporary halt to the lawsuits means Caesars won’t immediately face potential losses in a group of cases that have been winding their way through courts in Delaware and New York for more than a year.

Stock investors are lately demanding — and winning — the chance to fight for a recovery in bankruptcy, according to an analysis in today’s Wall Street Journal. In chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganizations, shareholders don’t get paid unless companies pay off all their debts, which typically means they don’t get paid. Rather than accept defeat, however, shareholders in energy, coal and other commodities-focused companies are fighting for a voice, and possibly a recovery, in some of the biggest bankruptcies that have been filed over the past couple of years. “Equity is just not as willing to walk away as they once were,” said DLA Piper restructuring lawyer Thomas Califano. In most of these cases, shareholders are wiped out as companies reorganize by giving equity to creditors or selling their assets at prices too low to cover their debts. “You just feel exploited when your life savings are about to be taken from you,” said Kristen Plaisance, who owns stock in bankrupt Texas oil and gas driller Energy XXI Ltd. Energy XXI’s shareholders allege in bankruptcy court filings that management wrongly marked down the value of the company before planning a restructuring that would hand control of the company to bondholders while letting current management keep their jobs and collect bonuses. In June, Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur granted Energy XXI investors an official committee.

Sycamore Partners yesterday confirmed that it submitted a bid for Aeropostale Inc. after a judge issued an opinion rejecting the teen-focused retailer's attempt to block an offer and blame its bankruptcy on the private equity firm, Reuters reported yesterday. Aeropostale owes $151 million to two Sycamore affiliates, Aero Investors LLC and MGF Sourcing Holdings Ltd, and had sought to preempt a credit bid by them. A representative for Sycamore said the firm made an offer for Aeropostale at the retailer's auction yesterday but declined to say if the offer was a credit bid. Aeropostale in court papers last month argued for a court order denying Aero, a lender, and MGF, a supplier, an opportunity to credit bid their claims. Aeropostale charged the affiliates had caused liquidity and inventory troubles in an effort to strain the company's finances and drive it into bankruptcy.

A senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee is pressing regulators to share two years of market data they have collected in connection with the Volcker Rule, a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act intended to rein in banks’ risky trading and investments, the New York Times reported today. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to regulators yesterday requesting information about certain quantitative trading metrics that the agencies had been collecting since before regulators prohibited banks from making risky bets with their own money last July. “The agencies currently have nearly two years of quantitative trading data, spanning periods both before and after the effective date of the proprietary trading ban,” Maloney said. “I believe that these quantitative trading metrics can provide important information not only about the efficacy of the Volcker Rule, but also about the general trading activities of U.S. banks, and the degree to which these trading activities have changed over the past two years.”

Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals Inc. is considering options — including bankruptcy — after two debtholders said the company was in default, the South Florida Business Journal reported today. The drug development company, which has historic ties to a former Virginia governor accused of corruption, says it only has $35,000 in unrestricted cash and faces payment demands of more than $10 million. Rock Creek has been working to develop a compound to treat acute and chronic inflammatory conditions, and has dedicated all its resources to research and development, it said in an Aug. 10 quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In October 2015, it raised $20 million in a private placement of senior secured convertible notes. On Aug. 24, one of the note holders, Hudson Bay Master Fund Ltd., sent Rock Creek an event of default redemption notice, withdrawing $6.7 million from its account and claiming it is still owed nearly $7 million, Rock Creek disclosed in a SEC filing yesterday.

Samson Resources Corp. has signed a revised restructuring pact with a group of creditors that calls for the oil-and-gas company to exit bankruptcy with its top-ranking loan paid off and equity in the hands of second-lien lenders, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Tulsa, Okla.-based Samson is battling junior creditors in bankruptcy court and must either defeat them or win them over in order to make the restructuring proposal a reality. The agreement signed on Friday pledges investors holding 39 percent of Samson’s second-lien loan claims to support a new chapter 11 plan that should be filed within days. When it filed for bankruptcy protection in September 2015, Samson was weighted down with about $4.9 billion worth of debt. It had a deal in hand, but falling energy prices continued to chop into the value of Samson’s assets and the pact fell apart. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

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