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A small Florida hedge fund that allegedly helped Indian tech firm Think & Learn Pvt hide $533 million must reveal where the money is located or face possible sanctions from a federal judge on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in a Friday hearing dismissed an effort by the investment firm, Camshaft Capital Fund, to avoid answering questions about the cash. The missing money is at the heart of a fight between lenders owed $1.2 billion and Think & Learn, the education-tech startup founded by entrepreneur Byju Raveendran. “The fact that they know the information and are refusing to produce it is just a huge red flag,” Judge Dorsey said during a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware on Friday. The cash belongs to Byju’s Alpha Inc., a bankrupt shell company affiliated with Think & Learn that was taken over by the lenders after their loan defaulted. The $533 million was transferred to the hedge fund and then moved to an unnamed, off-shore trust by Raveendran’s brother, Riju Ravindran, Byju’s lawyer Benjamin Finestone said during the hearing. Camshaft fought efforts to disclose details about the money because a hedge fund has a duty to protect its clients, lawyer Pieter Van Tol told Dorsey. The hedge fund also argued that Byju’s and the lenders should instead get information about the cash from a Delaware company called Inspilearn, which got the money from Camshaft before it was transferred to the unnamed trust.

The NYSE American exchange has and intends to delist shares of Polished.com after the company said it plans to file for bankruptcy, MarketWatch.com reported. The New York Stock Exchange's regulatory arm has determined that the stock is no longer suitable for listing after the online retailer of home appliances said on Thursday that it has suspended operations. Polished.com said that it was unable to obtain additional financing after "working to reach a resolution with its lenders" and explored multiple alternative funding paths, and now intends to file for chapter 7 protection. NYSE said that the company can review the staff's determination to delist the stock and appeal if it chooses.

Electric-vehicle startup Fisker issued a going concern warning Thursday and said it would lay off 15% of its staff, following a series of stumbles in its first year of production, the Wall Street Journal reported. Fisker’s warning about its ability to stay in business was triggered by its abrupt transition from a direct-to-consumer sales model to using a traditional dealership network, which the company said weighed on sales. It also came as Fisker reported a worse-than-expected loss for the year, and said it missed its full-year production target of at least 13,000 units. Fisker built a little over 10,000 vehicles in 2023 and delivered only 4,900 to customers. The company’s stock fell 34% in after-hours trading Thursday to under 50 cents a share. The California-based electric-car maker said the transition to a dealer model was key to its business plan and that it may need to raise additional cash from investors to stay in business. EV startups like Fisker, Rivian Automotive and Lucid Group are facing a difficult time ahead as the demand for battery-powered vehicles cools and competition intensifies, particularly from well-established car companies that have more margin to cut prices. Some, like Lordstown Motors, have already gone bankrupt. Fisker said that it aimed to produce 20,000 to 22,000 vehicles this year, which it said was in part a response to softer demand from American car buyers.

Fifteen months after a deal that was supposed to be the capstone of his successful run at Flagstar Bancorp Inc., Alessandro DiNello now finds himself thrust back into the top job and grappling with the turnaround of a bank in crisis, Bloomberg News reported. DiNello this week was named chief executive officer of the bank that bought Flagstar in late 2022: New York Community Bancorp, whose troubles erupted at the end of January when the company — a major lender to New York apartment landlords — said it was stockpiling cash to cover potential problems with loans. The bank’s issues deepened this week as it announced “material weaknesses” in how it tracks loan risks, took a $2.4 billion goodwill impairment tied to past transactions and pushed Thomas Cangemi out as CEO, naming DiNello his replacement. Even before the latest announcements, NYCB was already touting DiNello, 69, as key to reworking the Hicksville, New York-based lender. In a Feb. 15 investor presentation, the bank pointed to the many accomplishments DiNello — or “Sandro,” as the slideshow called him — achieved while atop Troy, Michigan-based Flagstar: selling $278 million of real estate loans to Customers Bancorp Inc., launching a homebuilder-lending platform, buying bank branches from East West Bancorp and Wells Fargo & Co., and ultimately striking the deal with NYCB.

Endo International settled federal civil and criminal charges over the company’s marketing and sale of opioids, agreeing to pay up to $465 million over several years, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The settlement with the U.S. government would clear the last major hurdle the Malvern, Pa.-based company needs to overcome to clinch a restructuring plan that would hand ownership of the company to its lenders. The agreement is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Endo filed for bankruptcy in 2022 under the weight of thousands of lawsuits from state and local governments and others over its sale and marketing of painkiller Opana ER. Under the settlement, Endo can pay $200 million when it wraps up its bankruptcy case or make installment payments totaling $365 million over 10 years, according to an announcement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York. Additionally, the company must make payments tied to its financial performance totaling up to $100 million between 2024 and 2028. As part of the settlement, Endo also agreed to plead guilty in federal court in Michigan to a misdemeanor count tied to misbranding Opana ER, according to the announcement. The settlement payments of up to $465 million resolve $1.5 billion in a criminal fine and a civil claim stemming from the marketing and sale of opioids as well as a payment obligation to the Internal Revenue Service.

Bankrupt electric vehicle manufacturer Lordstown Motors Corp. agreed to pay $25.5 million to settle US Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that the firm exaggerated the demand for its electric pickup truck, Bloomberg News reported. The automaker made misleading statements about its pre-orders for the truck, called the Endurance, and misrepresented how quickly it could deliver the trucks, according to the SEC. The firm rose to prominence after former US President Donald Trump hailed it for saving auto-maker jobs. A lawyer for the Lordstown, Ohio-based company declined to comment. The automaker didn’t admit to or deny the SEC’s findings as part of the settlement. “In a highly competitive race to deliver the first mass-produced electric pickup truck to the U.S. market, Lordstown oversold true demand for the Endurance,” Mark Cave, an associate director of enforcement at the SEC, said in a statement. The company filed for bankruptcy in June 2023 and later sold the last of its assets to the company’s founder, Steve Burns. Nasdaq delisted the company’s shares last July. The $25.5 million fine will be deemed satisfied through payments the company plans to make to settle two class-action lawsuits.

WeWork’s official junior creditors committee is seeking court approval to sue SoftBank, the co-working space provider’s biggest equity holder, alleging the Japanese conglomerate used WeWork’s prebankruptcy debt restructuring deal to improve its position in the company’s capital structure, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The committee said in a bankruptcy court filing Wednesday that SoftBank and another group of creditors representing 62% of WeWork’s unsecured notes orchestrated the May 2023 debt restructuring to “mitigate their losses and elevate their position in” WeWork’s capital structure, knowing that the company’s bankruptcy filing was imminent. Because of these “uptier transactions,” WeWork’s general unsecured creditors—including landlords and holders of about $180 million in unsecured notes—were left subordinated to $2.4 billion in newly created secured debt, the committee said. A WeWork spokesman didn’t directly comment on the committee’s assertion but said the company has made transparency and full cooperation with its key stakeholders a priority since its bankruptcy filing in November. The company remains focused on its lease renegotiations with landlords, aiming to emerge from bankruptcy “financially strong and profitable,” he said. The committee wants the bankruptcy court’s approval to pursue its claims against SoftBank and the participating creditors and, if appropriate, wants to seek a settlement to recover money for its constituents, according to the filing.

Terraform Labs Pte. transferred nearly $122 million to its lawyers just before it filed for bankruptcy and used some of the money to cover legal expenses for criminally charged co-founder Do Kwon, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Bloomberg Law reported. The SEC is challenging cash transfers to Terraform’s top law firm, Dentons US, that occurred in the three months before the company filed for bankruptcy in January, court papers show. The firm behind the now-collapsed TerraUSD stablecoin said it filed chapter 11 because it can’t afford penalties sought by federal regulators. Although the SEC said that it doesn’t oppose the company paying legitimate legal expenses, the “amount of funds at issue is extraordinary,” according to the regulator. Terraform transferred $166 million to Dentons in the full year before its chapter 11 filing, more than $5 million of which helped Do Kwon cover legal bills. The SEC alleges that the size and timing of the transfers are suspicious and that Terraform Labs must provide more documentation on them, saying that the company transferred $122 million into “an opaque slush fund for its lawyers.” The SEC argued that Judge Brendan Linehan Shannon, who is overseeing Terraform Labs’ bankruptcy, should deny the company’s request to retain Dentons unless the law firm returns $81 million, which roughly represents the amount of money that hadn’t been spent as of Feb. 13. Judge Shannon is expected to hear arguments on the dispute at a March 5 court hearing in Wilmington, Del.

A small North Texas custom homebuilder is trying to recover from runaway costs during the Covid-19 pandemic and a judgment of more than half a million dollars that it's struggling to pay, the Dallas Business Journal reported. Argyle, Texas-based Noble Classic Homes Inc. filed on Feb. 26 for chapter 11 protection in the Eastern District of Texas. The company listed almost $632,000 in assets and about $630,000 in debt tied to a judgment for a 2022 construction-leak lawsuit in Denton County court. "We have constructed an estimated 800 custom homes over the past 23 years and never once experienced something like this," Noble President John Michaels wrote in a letter attached to the bankruptcy filing. The same couple who filed the 2022 lawsuit also sued Noble for allegedly making fraudulent transfers to other entities, according to court documents. In the bankruptcy filing, Noble reported $16.7 million in revenue from home sales in 2023 through affiliate company Noble Classic Management LLC but only about $94,000 in profit.