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Members of Oklahoma’s billionaire Schusterman family have beaten back a lawsuit alleging that their $7.2 billion sale of Samson Resources to a KKR-led private equity consortium unfairly enriched them to the detriment of the oil-and-gas company’s creditors in bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A trustee pursuing recoveries for creditors in Samson’s bankruptcy had sued the former owners in 2017, saying the buyers paid twice the company’s fair market value in a 2011 deal. The trustee had alleged that the deal burdened Samson with more debt than it could handle, leading to its bankruptcy in 2015. In a ruling Wednesday, Judge Brendan Shannon in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., said the trustee failed to make its case that the subsequent owners overpaid. “The gold standard for determining the value of an asset is to sell it in an open and fair market,” the judge said. “A thing is worth what a willing buyer will pay to a willing seller following a proper marketing process” at arms’ length, with both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts. Opinions of valuation experts, such as the one that the Samson trustee used, are less reliable than negotiations in determining the fair market value of an asset, he said. Samson took on more than $3 billion in debt as part of the buyout and struggled afterward as oil and gas prices fell.

Tucson, Ariz.-based biotech firm HTG Molecular Diagnostics has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with plans to continue operations as it works out a plan to pay its debts, Tucson.com reported. The company, which developed a proprietary platform to rapidly develop molecular drug compounds, plans to exit that business to focus on its own development of new drugs to treat cancer and other diseases, according to bankruptcy filings. In a bankruptcy petition filed June 5 in Delaware, HTG’s corporate domicile, the company listed assets totaling about $6.7 million and debts of about $9 million. HTG, which was founded in 1997 and went public in 2015, was delisted from the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company's stock has traded as high as $24 per share in the past year but finished at 51 cents on Wednesday. For 2022, HTG posted a net loss of $21.6 million on revenue of $6.4 million.

OncoSec Medical shares were down 55% at 19 cents after the company said in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission it was filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy, MarketWatch.com reported. The stock is down 99% in the past 12 months. The company said its sole subsidiary, OncoSec Medical Australia, expects to liquidate and wind down operations under Australian law pursuant to a Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation. OncoSec also said that directors Linda Shi, Robert Arch, Stephany Foster, Joon Kim, H. Kim Lyerly, Kevin Smith and Chao Zhou each tendered their resignations, effective Wednesday, prior to the filing of the bankruptcy petition. Following these resignations, the company will have no members serving on its board of directors. Arch also tendered his resignation as the company's president and chief executive. As a result, the company no longer has any current executive officers.

O’Fallon Brewery this week filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as the company’s cash flow has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels and its interest rates have more than doubled in the past nine months, according to its attorney, the St. Louis Business Journal reported. The petition, made under the name Sugar Creek Acquisition, was filed Monday in bankruptcy court in St. Louis, listing assets of $1 million to $10 million and liabilities of $1 million to $10 million. The filing said the business, the fourth-largest brewer in the region by beer barrels produced, had sales of $4.5 million last year. The Maryland Heights, Mo.-based brewer, which operates at 45 Progress Parkway, a property owned by Salt Creek Holdings LLC, plans to remain open as it reconfigures its finances, according to Spencer Desai of Desai Law Firm, an attorney for O’Fallon Brewery Chief Executive Jim Gorczyca. That’s partly because the company has “more value as a going concern,” or a company with the resources needed to continuing operating, than it would if it closed, Desai said. The brewery, which was founded in 2000, has been having cash flow and financial troubles stemming from high interest rates and hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic, according to Desai. O’Fallon Brewery has a $5 million loan from the Small Business Administration with a variable interest rate component, which has caused the company’s interest rate to have “literally doubled” from about 5% to almost 11% in the past nine months, Desai said. “That put a huge cash flow strain on them."

Instant Brands on Wednesday said a bankruptcy court approved motions related to its chapter 11 petitions filed earlier in the week, MarketWatch.com reported. The company behind products including Pyrex and CorningWare said the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas authorized it on an interim basis to access and use financing from its existing lenders. This gives Instant Brands access to financing under a $125 million debtor-in-possession asset-based revolving credit facility, and a $132.5 million debtor-in-possession term loan credit facility, up to $100 million of which will be immediately funded on an interim basis. The interim approval granted by court enables Instant Brands to pay employee wages and benefits without interruption and pay vendors, suppliers and distributors in full under normal terms, the company said. "While we continue our efforts to strengthen our financial position, this court-approved financing gives us the ability to continue," said President and Chief Executive Ben Gadbois. Instant Brands on Monday said the company and certain of its affiliates initiated a voluntary chapter 11 process as it works to strengthen its financial standing.

Federal prosecutors investigating the collapse of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange said late Wednesday that, at least for now, they would withdraw several of the charges facing the company’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, the New York Times reported. In a court filing, the prosecutors said they would proceed to a trial in October without pursuing five of the 13 charges against Mr. Bankman-Fried — a set of accusations that the government added to the crypto mogul’s indictment in the months after he was extradited from the Bahamas in December. Among those charges was a bank fraud count, as well as an allegation that Mr. Bankman-Fried bribed a foreign government. The withdrawal of those counts was a victory for Mr. Bankman-Fried, who has argued that prosecutors should not have been allowed to charge him with additional crimes after his extradition. But the win came with a major caveat: The prosecutors asked the judge overseeing the case, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan, to schedule a second trial in early 2024 on those five counts. The prosecutors said that the delay was a procedural necessity. This week, Mr. Bankman-Fried won a ruling in the Bahamas, where FTX was based, granting him the ability to argue in court there that the Bahamian government should not consent to the additional charges. That legal dispute could take months to unfold.

Overstock.com will buy certain assets of bankrupt home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond for $21.5 million, the online retailer said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The deal, designated a stalking-horse bid under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, will include intellectual property, business data and rights to mobile applications, and will also assume certain liabilities of Bed Bath & Beyond. Bed Bath will continue to solicit other bids until the expected deadline on Friday and will undertake an auction next week to determine the winning bidder if additional bids are received, the company said. The retailer had delivered 10% of the purchase price in cash to an escrow agent in immediately available funds, Overstock said in a regulatory filing. Bed Bath & Beyond filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April after struggling with dwindling sales and a failed merchandising strategy.

Instant Brands Inc., the maker of Instant Pot and Pyrex kitchenware, will solicit offers to sell the business in bankruptcy while considering alternative transactions to restructure more than $500 million in debt on its balance sheet, a company lawyer said yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. Instant Brands lawyer Brian Resnick said during a virtual court hearing that company advisers will explore both options as the company tries to figure out how to get out of chapter 11. The company, which is owned by private-equity firm Cornell Capital, could use chapter 11 to restructure its balance sheet if it can find an investor to fund a chapter 11 plan; a buyer could purchase Instant Brands’ assets or lenders could take over the business in exchange for debt relief, Resnick said. “All those options are on the table,” he said. Instant Brands wants parties to submit indications of interest by July 27 and is targeting an Aug. 23 bid deadline, according to a slide show company lawyers played during Tuesday’s hearing. In the meantime, Instant Brands will continue operating its business as normal, Resnick said. The company already cleared an initial hurdle in its chapter 11: It won court approval for a roughly $133 million chapter 11 financing to fund the business and keep its factories running during bankruptcy. The structure is “somewhat unusual,” Instant Brands lawyer David Schiff said, necessitated by a complex debt deal the business used to raise new money early this year.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the indicted founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, wants a U.S. judge to throw out criminal charges brought against him following his extradition from the Bahamas, Reuters reported. In papers filed late Monday in Manhattan federal court, lawyers for the former billionaire said they asked Bahamas' Supreme Court to bar the country's government from authorizing U.S. prosecutors to move forward on the five charges, until their client has a chance to be heard. The lawyers said that a sixth charge, for violating U.S. campaign finance laws, should also be dismissed even though it was brought before his extradition, because the Bahamas did not consent to it. They want U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss the charges, or try them separately from seven additional charges at Bankman-Fried's scheduled Oct. 2 trial. FTX was based in the Caribbean country. "To proceed otherwise would cause significant prejudice to Mr. Bankman-Fried and should not be permitted," his lawyers wrote on Monday. Bankman-Fried, 31, was extradited in December from the Bahamas to face charges he stole from customers, lied to investors and lenders, and violated campaign finance laws. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan later accused him of bank fraud and bribing Chinese officials.