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FTX Trading Ltd. won bankruptcy court approval to begin selling its stakes in digital trusts managed by crypto firm Grayscale Investments in order to raise money to repay creditors owed billions of dollars, Bloomberg News reported. FTX plans to sell the assets in a way that maximizes the value and avoids disrupting the market for the digital investments, according to court documents. Grayscale sold investments linked to various digital currencies. The buyers didn’t hold the actual currencies, but instead got shares in trusts that Grayscale put together and managed. FTX’s stakes in the trusts were worth about $744 million as of last month, the company said in court papers. Since FTX filed for bankruptcy last year amid fraud allegations, the company’s advisers have been tracking down assets and trying to untangle a complex web of debts owed to various creditors, including customers who put cash and crypto on the trading platform. FTX’s administrators have so far recovered about $7 billion in assets, including $3.4 billion of crypto, according to court documents.

A prominent Pacific Northwest lobbying and public affairs firm has filed for chapter 11 protection amid a bitter legal dispute between estranged co-owners, the Seattle Times reported. Seattle-based Strategies 360 filed a petition on Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Washington in an effort to stave off what CEO Ron Dotzauer described in court filings as a hostile and humiliating takeover bid by his former business partner, Eric Sorenson. A legal fight between the two men has been brewing for years over Dotzauer’s failure to pay Sorenson $6 million as part of an agreement to buy out his former 49% ownership stake in the firm, court records show.

The bankruptcy estate of Bed Bath & Beyond has filed the largest-ever lawsuit with the Federal Maritime Commission, seeking around $300 million from Mediterranean Shipping Co. for allegedly overcharging to move its cargo during the pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. The bankrupt retailer wants Geneva-based MSC, the world’s largest boxship operator in terms of capacity, to pay around $150 million for damages and an equal sum for what it described as exploitative and coercive behavior. Complaints by American companies are handled by the FMC, the U.S. maritime regulator. Bed Bath & Beyond filed for bankruptcy protection in April, after years of losses. It subsequently closed all of its stores and sold its brand to Overstock.com, which has taken on the Bed Bath & Beyond name. The bankrupt estate changed its legal name to DK Butterfly. The 36-page lawsuit said MSC’s performance in 2021 was “abysmal” and details how the retailer had to pay high freight rates in the spot market to get its goods shipped. It also claims that MSC failed to meet its contractual obligations in terms of pricing along with saddling the retailer with surcharges.

Airline SAS AB is set to complete its U.S. chapter 11 process by June following expected regulatory approvals in Europe, according to Chief Executive Officer Anko van der Werff, Bloomberg News reported. That means the process is going according to plan, the CEO said in an interview on Thursday after posting fourth-quarter earnings that saw its adjusted pretax loss widen 30% year-on-year. The Scandinavian carrier filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022, and in October reached a $1.2 billion refinancing deal with a group of investors, including Air France-KLM and Castlelake. A bankruptcy court in New York signed off on the financing earlier this month. If SAS was an American company, it would likely have emerged from the chapter 11 process in February, van der Werff said by phone. “But we also have to go through a Swedish reorganization, which we’ll do straight after in February or March, and then we’ll have to wait for regulatory approval from the European Commission. So all in all, I expect it to take until June or so,” the CEO said. The €833 million ($915 million) in Danish and Swedish state aid from 2020 was approved by European Union state-aid watchdogs Wednesday, after an earlier approval was struck down by an EU court. The decision was expected by SAS, van der Werff said, adding that “everything is on track, really” in terms of the regulatory processes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday charged Jonathan Larmore, a Phoenix-based real-estate investor, with stock manipulation tied to a false tender offer for now-bankrupt WeWork, the Wall Street Journal reported. The SEC charges also allege that ArciTerra Companies, a real estate investment company, and Larmore, who is the company’s chief executive, misappropriated more than $35 million in managed funds over a number of years. The SEC alleges that Larmore had, since at least January 2017, used a “substantial portion” of misappropriated funds from ArciTerra for family members’ expenses and to fund a lifestyle that included private jets, yachts and expensive residences. Earlier this month, according to the SEC, Larmore and Cole Capital Funds, an entity created and controlled by Larmore, issued a press release saying the firm would purchase 51% of all minority ownership shares in WeWork for $9 a share. The offer, priced at more than nine times WeWork’s stock price at the time, prompted shares to more than double after-hours. Larmore allegedly purchased 72,000 call options in WeWork in the days before and planned to execute on the trades once the stock rose.

A bankruptcy trustee in a court case with the power to upend the roughly $1.4 trillion leveraged loan market plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case after losing an appeal in August, Bloomberg News reported. The Supreme Court gave the trustee, Marc Kirschner, until Dec. 19 to seek review, according to the high court’s online docket. The Court earlier this month extended Kirschner’s deadline after he requested the extra time, citing, among other factors, the hiring of new legal counsel, law firm MoloLamken. The appeal would follow a widely watched ruling won by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and other banks in late August by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that a $1.8 billion leveraged loan taken out by drug-testing company Millennium Health was not a security, effectively affirming the status quo. Leveraged loans have traditionally been excluded from securities laws, but in recent years the lines between between the loan and junk bond markets have become increasingly blurred. Plaintiffs in this lawsuit argued that loans should be subject to the same rules as securities like bonds.

The Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, N.Y., has proposed a revised $200 million settlement of sex abuse claims, but faced immediate pushback on Tuesday from a U.S. bankruptcy judge who demanded more detailed financial information from the bankrupt Long Island diocese, Reuters reported. The diocese said in a Tuesday statement that its revised bankruptcy plan filed Monday was its "best and final" offer. It would pay claimants $200 million in cash, plus the potential for additional recoveries from the diocese's insurers. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan, who is overseeing the diocese's chapter 11, and attorneys for abuse survivors called the proposal a nonstarter at a court hearing later Tuesday morning. The diocese's attempt to resolve about 600 sex-abuse claims has been stalled for months, and Judge Glenn had warned in July that he could dismiss the bankruptcy case if no progress was made. Judge Glenn on Tuesday said he would not approve a bankruptcy plan without detailed financial information from each of the approximately 130 parishes within the diocese. Abuse claimants who vote on the plan must be able to weigh the value of their claim against the resources available to the parish where their abuse occurred, Judge Glenn said.

Digital Currency Group struck a new repayment deal with its bankrupt subsidiary, Genesis Global Holdco LLC, as part of an agreement to end a lawsuit that sought roughly $620 million from DCG, Bloomberg News reported. Genesis lawyer Sean O’Neal said during a hearing yesterday that the deal will provide the bankrupt crypto lender with roughly $200 million in value over the next few weeks and requires DCG to complete outstanding payments in April 2024. If DCG defaults, Genesis can try to collect any unpaid amount, according to court papers. The proposed agreement is meant to resolve a lawsuit Genesis brought in September to recover outstanding loans from its parent conpany. DCG, which has been making payments to Genesis since the lawsuit was filed, still owes its subsidiary $324.5 million as of Nov. 28, according to court documents. Genesis said that the agreement will avoid months of costly litigation with its parent company and guarantees that the bankrupt crypto lender will be partially repaid what it’s owed. O’Neal said that the deal doesn’t resolve other disputes with DCG related to Genesis’s plan for resolving its bankruptcy. Genesis is also facing off in court against its former business partner Gemini Trust Co., and the two also face a suit brought against them by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Meanwhile, New York State has brought legal action against them and DCG.

Talc supplier Barretts Minerals is challenging an effort by creditors, including tort claimants, to move its chapter 11 bankruptcy case from Texas to Montana, where the business is based, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Facing hundreds of personal-injury lawsuits, the former Pfizer minerals business filed for bankruptcy protection in October in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Barretts supplied talc for cosmetic products alleged to have caused injuries primarily from exposure to asbestos supposedly contained in the products. Pfizer spun off Barretts in 1992, when the health care business wanted to divest itself of its minerals businesses. Minerals Technologies became an independent company that included Barretts, taking over the specialty minerals businesses. Earlier this month, the official unsecured creditors’ committee said the Barretts bankruptcy case should be heard in Montana, noting that the company’s primary business of talc mining had occurred in Dillon, Mont., a few miles from its headquarters. The committee said Barretts is trying to justify its “blatant forum shopping” in Texas by becoming a landlord to two restaurants there, a McDonald’s in San Antonio and a Whataburger in San Angelo. In a response filed on Monday, Barretts Chief Restructuring Officer David Gordon said that of the more than 550 pending talc lawsuits against the business, he isn’t aware of any in Montana. In contrast, he said that he is aware of at least six lawsuits against Barretts in Texas.

FTX investors suing the cryptocurrency exchange’s celebrity promoters for allegedly helping to facilitate an $11 billion fraud have some new targets, including Major League Baseball, Formula One racing and Mercedes-Benz Group’s racing team, Bloomberg News reported. Investors’ lawyers sued MLB — the first major sports league to sign a promotional deal with FTX in 2021 — and the other entities in U.S. federal court in Miami on Monday, accusing them of "aiding and abetting and/or actively participating in the FTX Group’s massive, multi-billion-dollar global fraud.” At one point, MLB umpires wore FTX patches on their sleeves. FTX investors who say they lost at least $11 billion in the exchange's meltdown allege that MLB, F1 and the Mercedes F1 racing team helped push the sale of unregulated securities through promotional deals with the cryptocurrency site. Company founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and conspiracy earlier this month. The additions broaden a class-action suit that already includes more than two dozen celebrities who shilled for FTX in TV commercials and other events. They include big names such as ex-NFL star Tom Brady, current American League Most Valuable Player Shohei Ohtani and NBA sharpshooter Steph Curry.