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The Baha Mar resort’s Chinese lender has decided to foreclose on the $3.5 billion resort in the Bahamas and has appointed a receiver to bring the delayed project to completion, roughly six weeks after it was thrown out of bankruptcy protection in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reported today. The move by the Export-Import Bank of China, which received Bahamian court approval to name Deloitte to the receiver role, comes a few weeks after some 2,000 employees in the Bahamas lost their jobs at the partially completed resort at the request of court-appointed liquidators. The employees had been kept on the payroll at the partially completed resort with the help of the Bahamian government.

Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. secured a bankruptcy judge’s permission to sell its Harrah’s Tunica Hotel & Casino in Mississippi as part of its chapter 11 restructuring, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar yesterday signed off on the shuttered casino’s sale, for $3 million, to TJM Properties. Caesars canceled last week’s auction for the property after no rival bidders stepped forward to challenge TJM Properties’ offer. The buyer, which owns hotels and senior-living properties, acquired another closed casino, the Atlantic Club Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., for $13.5 million last year.

Junior creditors of Caesars Entertainment launched a fresh attack against a top U.S. restructuring attorney, alleging that he misled a judge and asking that the law firm be disqualified from parts of the casino group's bankruptcy case, Reuters reported yesterday. Jones Day, the junior bondholders' law firm, asked the court to reconsider a May order that allowed the bankrupt unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp to hire Kirkland, led by James Sprayregen. The dispute between two of the best-known law firms in corporate restructuring adds another layer of feuding to Caesars' $18 billion bankruptcy, which involves the biggest U.S. private equity and hedge fund firms. In a new court filing on Friday, Jones Day revealed evidence from a board meeting of the operating unit that it says shows testimony by Sprayregen at a trial over Kirkland's hiring by Caesars was incomplete and misleading. Kirkland & Ellis denied the allegation and said that it was without merit. Jones Day initially filed a redacted version of the motion last week, but Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar in Chicago rejected that for procedural reasons.

Newspaper publisher Freedom Communications Inc., owner of the Orange County Register, on Sunday filed for bankruptcy-court protection with a plan to sell the beleaguered company to a local investment group led by the company's publisher, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Richard E. Mirman, a former casino executive and Freedom's chief executive, placed the newspaper publisher into chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Santa Ana, Calif. Mirman and Orange County developer Mike Harrah, intend to buy the publisher's assets out of bankruptcy, subject to higher bids at a court-supervised auction. In a letter to employees, Mirman said Freedom was on pace to post a profit this year, but said accumulated losses under the company's previous leadership have left the publisher in too deep of a hole.

American Apparel is hoping to give its employees a boost, proposing bonuses to stem a staff exodus as well as funding for the defense of its top executives against lawsuits brought by shareholders and its former chief executive, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The beleaguered seller of made-in-the-U.S. clothing said in court papers filed on Friday that the bankruptcy has hit its workforce hard; it has lost 30 corporate employees and 6 percent of its retail staff since it filed for chapter 11 protection less than a month ago. American Apparel says it is sticking to its plan to keep open a large number of its stores during its bankruptcy restructuring. It operates more than 200 around the world.

RAAM Global Energy Co. is just the latest oil and gas company to file for bankruptcy protection, but it certainly won't be the last, according to a commentary in The Deal on Friday. The Lexington, Ky.-based debtor submitted its chapter 11 petition on Oct. 26, at the end of a 12-month span that's been abysmal for the sector. Nearly two dozen large oil and gas companies have ended up in bankruptcy in the past year. Read more. 

For more on oil and gas bankruptcies, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy. 

Fresh & Easy LLC filed for bankruptcy Friday, the second grocery chain backed by supermarket mogul Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos. buyout firm to seek chapter 11 protection in recent months, Dow Jones Newswires reported on Friday. Fresh & Easy tumbled into bankruptcy in Wilmington, Del., the company's second chapter 11 filing in two years. Last week, the company shut down its 97 stores and said that it was hopeful that it could find a purchaser that would restart the business. Fresh & Easy's bankruptcy filing comes as the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., owned by Yucaipa and Mount Kellett Capital Management, navigates its second chapter 11 filing, selling and shutting down stores. Since filing for bankruptcy in July, A&P has sold 159 of 296 stores.

Samson Resources Corp's chief executive officer plans to resign, a lawyer for the bankrupt oil and gas producer told a judge yesterday, adding that the company's six-week-old restructuring deal is in peril due to tumbling natural gas prices, Reuters reported yesterday. CEO Randy Limbacher will continue in his role until December to smooth the transition, said Joshua Sussberg, Samson's lawyer. Sussberg said that the continuing dive in commodity prices has unraveled the company's restructuring support agreement, or RSA, struck just before it entered bankruptcy. He said that the company and lenders were negotiating for new terms to refinance.

Patriot Coal Corporation announced that its reorganization plan became effective yesterday, marking the successful completion of the chapter 11 restructuring process, ABL Advisor reported. In conjunction with the plan becoming effective, Patriot has completed the transactions to sell most of Patriot's operating assets to Blackhawk Mining, LLC and to sell substantially all of its remaining assets and liabilities to an affiliate of Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, Inc. Centerview Partners LLC is serving as financial advisor and investment banker for Patriot, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP is serving as legal advisor to Patriot. Alvarez & Marsal is serving as Chief Restructuring Officer for Patriot.

Bondholders who lost an $890 million court fight with Energy Future Holdings Corp. are maneuvering to get a hearing in a federal appeals court before the power company's $42 billion bankruptcy is over and done, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Once Energy Future exits bankruptcy, bondholders risk being told their appeal would upset too many other investors with big money riding on the company's chapter 11 plan, lawyers for the bondholders said in court papers. They are seeking permission to make a beeline to a federal appeals panel in Philadelphia to challenge their bankruptcy court losses. A court contest over Energy Future's chapter 11 plan is slated to begin next week, but chances are the company won't be ready to implement its turnaround plan until April, or even later, bondholders say.