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Revlon Inc. told the judge overseeing the cosmetics giant’s bankruptcy that shareholders don’t need a special, company-funded committee to represent them in the chapter 11 case because there is no evidence the equity is worth anything, Bloomberg News reported. The company urged U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge David S. Jones in Manhattan to reject the request from minority equity owners in part because low bond prices imply that equity has little hope of recouping anything. The committee representing unsecured creditors also asked Judge Jones to reject a shareholder committee. “Revlon stock trading has all the outward appearances of a so-called ‘meme’ stock,” the committee said in its objection, referring to shares that rise in value only because of Internet chatter, not economic reason. Revlon shares tumbled as much as 34% to as low as $5.62 Monday before rebounding to around $8.31, leaving it down some 2% on the day. That price is up from as little as $1.17 in June. Nearly all official committee are appointed by the Office of the U.S. Trustee, an arm of the U.S. Justice Department that acts as a watchdog in corporate bankruptcies. In the Revlon case, the office appointed the unsecured creditor committee, but last month rebuffed the shareholders. The shareholder group, which owns 4.7% of Revlon’s common stock, asked Judge Jones on Aug. 9 to order the U.S. Trustee to appoint a panel. On that day the shares closed at about $8.

A creditor group that holds roughly $3.2 billion in Endo International PLC debt said it is weighing a rival bid to purchase the pharmaceutical company’s assets out of chapter 11, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The group, comprising more than a dozen institutions that own a cross section of Endo’s bank and bond debt, is a potential challenger to a stalking-horse bid, which sets a minimum for others to beat, that the company announced when it filed for bankruptcy this week under the weight of opioid litigation. The first-lien creditors behind the stalking-horse bid have agreed to acquire the business out of chapter 11 in exchange for forgiving $6 billion in company debt. The cross-holding group includes J.P. Morgan Investment Management Inc., Citadel Equity Fund and funds managed by Franklin Advisers Inc. and Oaktree Capital Management LP, according to papers filed on Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. Andrew Rosenberg, a lawyer representing the group, said during Endo’s debut bankruptcy hearing Thursday that his clients don’t believe “the keys to this company” should be turned over to the stalking-horse bidders. The leading bid, he said, provides a starting point for a sale of the business and nothing more. The creditor group formed in April 2021 and negotiated for months on a potential restructuring, but talks with Endo cooled off in the weeks leading up to the bankruptcy filing because the price of the drugmaker’s debt had fallen, Mr. Rosenberg said. But the price of Endo’s first-lien debt rebounded after the company released information showing it “vastly outperformed” negative first-quarter guidance, Mr. Rosenberg said, adding the drugmaker’s second-lien debt has also experienced a similar rebound. “We definitely are considering a bid but we’re not promising what we’ll do in these cases yet,” Mr. Rosenberg said.

Lawyers representing 3M Co.’s bankrupt Aearo Technologies LLC subsidiary defended its request to a bankruptcy judge to extend a litigation stay to the parent company to resolve mass earplug lawsuits, saying such a move would be in line with other court rulings, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Aearo Technologies lawyer Chad Husnick on Wednesday said before Judge Jeffrey Graham of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Indianapolis that even though 3M itself didn’t file for bankruptcy, it also should be shielded from the 230,000 pending lawsuits that alleged 3M’s military earplugs were defective. Without the protection, Mr. Husnick said, mass lawsuits would continue against 3M in the U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., and would complicate earplug unit Aearo’s restructuring. “Without this requested relief, we will have continued chaos with no focus,” Mr. Husnick said, referring to multiple motions filed with the district court by personal-injury lawyers suing 3M since Aearo’s bankruptcy filing last month. Those lawyers wanted the district judge to stop 3M’s plan to shift the pending earplug lawsuits to the bankruptcy court, but the judge rejected their requests and instead will allow a bankruptcy court to decide whether to shield 3M from ongoing litigation. Mr. Husnick said Aearo’s request to extend a litigation stay to its parent company was in line with recent rulings, including the one by Judge Michael Kaplan of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Trenton, N.J., that has allowed an automatic-stay extension to Johnson & Johnson in its subsidiary LTL Management LLC’s chapter 11 to resolve talc-related mass lawsuits against J&J. Mr. Husnick said that Aearo’s request was even more legitimate because the 3M subsidiary is an “organic structure” that has been in existence for many years, while in some earlier cases, companies used a controversial merger strategy known as the Texas Two-Step.

A group of Boy Scouts of America insurers will likely appeal the youth group's $2.3 billion sexual abuse settlement after it is approved in bankruptcy court, their attorneys said yesterday, Reuters reported. The insurers, including AIG and Liberty Mutual, had objected to the settlement, saying the Boy Scouts colluded with men who claimed they were abused by troop leaders as children to push liability onto the insurers. The insurers' attorneys said at a Thursday hearing in Delaware bankruptcy court that they continued to object despite U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein's partial approval of the deal and recent revisions made to it by the Boy Scouts. The Boy Scouts will seek court approval next month for its revised bankruptcy plan, which would provide at least $2.3 billion to compensate more than 80,000 men who have made abuse claims. The biggest change in the amended plan was the removal of a $250 million settlement payment from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which Judge Silverstein refused to approve. Judge Silverstein approved many parts of the plan in a July 29 opinion, and the Boy Scouts' latest revisions were meant to address the parts that Silverstein did not sign off on. Judge Silverstein's July 29 opinion scaled back some of the Boy Scouts' proposals related to insurance coverage for sexual abuse. The insurers' attorneys did not discuss in court which portions of the opinion they intend to appeal. Two of the Boy Scouts’ primary insurers, affiliates of Hartford Financial Services Group and Chubb Ltd, support the settlement and are not part of the group that is considering an appeal. The Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy in February 2020 after being hit by a flood of sexual abuse lawsuits when several U.S. states passed laws allowing accusers to sue over allegations dating back decades.

The U.S. Trustee handling the bankruptcy case for crypto lender Celsius Network is seeking the appointment of an examiner to help get additional information and clear up “confusion and anxiety,” Bloomberg News reported. A representative for U.S. Trustee William Harrington said in a hearing on Tuesday that they’re considering appointing an examiner to look into a slew of issues surrounding the bankrupt company. The representative, Shara Cornell, said in a filing dated Thursday that she hasn’t been able to get some additional financial information that would shed light on the crypto lender’s operations. “There is no real understanding among customers, parties in interest, and the public as to the type or actual value of crypto held by the Debtors or where it is held,” the filing said. An independent examiner would analyze Celsius’s business model, operations, investments and lending transactions, among other things. An examiner would also look at Celsius management’s “role in creating the Debtors’ current illiquidity,” the filing said, as well as any “irregularities.” Celsius filed for bankruptcy on July 13. Since then, more than 300 customers sent in letters, some of them claiming they were deceived and asking for the return of their money. A lawyer for Celsius on Tuesday said that it’s received multiple offers of fresh cash to help fund its restructuring process. The firm said it will meet with an unsecured creditors’ committee next week and is working “expeditiously” on the path forward.

David Little was starting to lose hope. Like thousands of other investors, he had lost a large chunk of his cryptocurrency savings — a sum that once accounted for more than half his net worth — when the experimental crypto bank Celsius Network filed for bankruptcy this summer. Then in July, Little wrote a letter to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing that he and others who had deposited their digital currencies in a special type of Celsius account should be able to withdraw the funds, the New York Times reported. Soon he started getting calls from fellow depositors — a man who was struggling to pay rent, a woman who had lost her retirement savings. Little started a group chat that grew to include hundreds of Celsius customers. Within days, they raised $100,000 to hire the law firm Togut, Segal & Segal to press their case in court. The company’s implosion was one of the most damaging episodes of this summer’s crypto crash, a moment of reckoning that exposed the industry’s risky practices and ruined thousands of investors. Celsius customers alone lost $5 billion, and the firm’s collapse sent tremors across the digital currencies market, tanking the price of Bitcoin and Ether. Now the crash has entered a crucial new phase: a frenzied rush to recover lost funds. The effort stretches beyond Celsius, as the amateur traders who bet on a range of failed crypto projects seek compensation, file lawsuits and mobilize online. At the same time, some of the industry’s most powerful firms are examining what’s left of the distressed companies in a hunt for potential deals.