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Coal producer Walter Energy, Inc. is headed to a bankruptcy auction with an offer from senior lenders to cancel or take on $1.25 billion worth of the company's debts to set a floor price for the competition, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In addition to the $1.25 billion "credit bid," Walter's senior lenders are offering $5.4 million cash for the Alabama-based company. In bankruptcy, lenders can pledge the amount they're owed by a bankrupt company when bidding on a company's assets. In effect, the lenders can swap all or a portion of the face amount of the debt they're owed for an ownership stake.

Cruise industry newcomer Haimark Line has filed for bankruptcy just months after beginning operations, USA Today reported today. "Any disruptions in service will be announced if and when they occur during this period of reorganization," the line said in the statement. Initially offering voyages along the Eastern USA and into the Great Lakes, Haimark had a troubled start this summer. It's only ship, the 210-passenger Saint Laurent, crashed into a lock while navigating the St. Lawrence Seaway just weeks after its May 30 debut. In its statement, Haimark blamed the accident for the bankruptcy filing, citing insurance issues that remain unresolved. The line charters the Saint Laurent from Clipper Cruises, which owns the vessel.

Coal miner Alpha Natural Resources Inc. is seeking to shed retiree benefits as efforts to come up with a restructuring plan take longer than expected, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Alpha in court papers on Tuesday asked a bankruptcy judge to let it terminate the medical, life insurance and other benefits it provides to about 4,580 non-union retirees or their spouses. The plans also potentially cover 6,670 active, non-union employees, although they wouldn't receive the benefits until their retirement. The benefits slated for termination don't include pensions. Alpha said that it in cutting the benefits by the end of the year, it hopes to escape about $125 million in future obligations. Maintaining the benefits cost the company about $2.7 million last year and about $2.8 million so far this year, court papers show.

Tribune Publishing Co., the owner of the Los Angeles Times, yesterday offered $3 million to fund Freedom Communications Inc.’s bankruptcy case, setting the stage for a potential bidding war for the publisher of the Orange County Register involving the paper’s existing management and their larger rival to the north, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A lawyer for Tribune, a newspaper publisher that has made its own pass through bankruptcy in recent years, said that all it wants in exchange for the $3 million deposit is the right to bid during a sale process for the publisher of the Orange County Register or to be paid back if the assets are sold to someone else. The parties will return to court on Nov. 13 to consider several other matters, and potentially the offer from Tribune, which could eliminate financing offered by the Register’s lender, the hedge fund Silver Point Capital LP.

The American auto industry yesterday reported its best October sales in a decade, led by double-digit growth at all three Detroit carmakers, the New York Times reported yesterday. Industry analysts projected that the seasonally adjusted annual sales rate would exceed 18 million vehicles for the second consecutive month as consumers continued to splurge on new pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. Overall, automakers said that they sold 1.46 million vehicles during the month, which was a 13.6 percent increase over the 1.28 million sold in the same period a year ago, according to the market research firm Autodata Corporation.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc. has reached an accord with Apple that will get it out from under $439 million in debt it picked up in a failed effort to qualify as a supplier of smartphone-screen material, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The settlement provides for an auction by Nov. 23 of equipment that GT provided in the effort, the proceeds of which will be divided, GT said in court papers filed on Monday. While GT intends to hang on to some of the equipment — as many as 600 sapphire-making furnaces — it is prepared to auction what it can and abandon what it can't cart off, court papers say. Anything not sold will be handed over to Apple, which has agreed to scrap the equipment and extinguish the loan it made to transform GT from an equipment manufacturer into a supplier of smartphone-screen material.

Fertilizer company BioNitrogen Holdings Corp. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday in Florida, where it has been working toward building plants, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A so-called clean-tech company, BioNitrogen was set up to produce fertilizer out of agricultural waste instead of using subterranean natural gas. The company estimated debt of $3.5 million and assets worth from $1 million to $10 million, in papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida. In October, BioNitrogen was hit with a default judgment in favor of Annon Consulting Inc., a Canadian company that lent it $845,000 at 30 percent interest in December 2013. The debt to Annon is listed at $1.4 million in BioNitrogen’s bankruptcy court papers.

Rare earths supplier Molycorp Inc. said it has filed a joint plan to emerge from chapter 11 protection, Reuters reported yesterday. The plan, which was filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware yesterday, has proposed an exit of chapter 11 through a stand-alone reorganization or a sale of substantially all of its assets, the company said in a statement. The Greenwood, Colo.-based company said that it has the backing of its largest pre-petition secured creditor and its post-petition lender and investment funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management. The company filed for chapter 11 protection in June, along with its North American subsidiaries to restructure $1.7 billion of debt in its U.S. and Canadian operations.

Total bankruptcy filings in the United States decreased 11 percent in October 2015 from October of last year, according to data provided by Epiq Systems, Inc. Bankruptcy filings totaled 70,211 in October 2015, down from the October 2014 total of 79,006.  Consumer filings also declined 11 percent to 67,742 from the October 2014 consumer filing total of 76,127. Total commercial filings in October 2015 decreased to 2,469, representing a 14 percent decline from the 2,879 business filings recorded in October 2014. Total commercial chapter 11 filings increased 10 percent to 428 filings in October 2015 from the 391 commercial chapter 11 filings registered in October 2014.

Retailer American Apparel Inc. received a bankruptcy court’s final approval to tap its $90 million bankruptcy financing package provided by Standard General and other investors after the company was able to resolve a number of objections from unsecured creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Linehan Shannon approved the financing during a hearing yesterday “given the substantial negotiations” that resulted in a number of modifications to the terms of the financing. The financing provides $30 million in fresh capital for American Apparel while refinancing $60 million in debt owed to Standard General and other investors before the bankruptcy filing.