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Los Angeles Clippers point guard Russell Westbrook joined the group of investors who took over a sprawling Arizona youth-sports facility that hammered bondholders with losses when it collapsed into bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Westbrook, a nine-time National Basketball League all-star, will also lead the facility’s basketball programming and community outreach efforts. The efforts to revive the complex may help boost the recoveries for bondholders, who were virtually wiped out after it filed for bankruptcy last year but retain a small equity stake in the business. Legacy Park, financed with $280 million of bonds issued through the Arizona Industrial Development Authority in 2020 and 2021, was unable to pay its debts after the pandemic upended the sports industry and usage of the facility fell far short of expectations. A firm founded by Chad Brownstein, a Los Angeles-based investor and a former vice chairman of Banc of California, purchased Legacy Park for approximately $26 million at the end of 2023. The purchase provided bondholders with $2.4 million in cash and an 11% equity stake in the new ownership entity. The new owners have since rebranded the facility as Arizona Athletic Grounds.

Scandinavian airline SAS AB will cancel and redeem all of its common shares and commercial hybrid bonds when it emerges from chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the US around June, Bloomberg News reported. “SAS reiterates its expectation that there will be only a modest recovery for general unsecured creditors, no recovery for subordinated creditors and no value for SAS AB’s existing shareholders,” the carrier said in a statement released at 11 p.m. Stockholm time on Tuesday. The airline also set out financial targets for the year having secured a $1.2 billion restructuring last fall with a consortium including Air France-KLM and private equity firm Castlelake LP taking a stake in the ailing company. The debt-burdened carrier had filed chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, high fuel prices and a pilot strike. For the fiscal year 2024, SAS expects revenues of more than 48 billion kronor ($4.6 billion) with debt falling to a range of 22 billion to 24 billion kronor from as high as 39 billion kronor when it emerges from chapter 11, which it expects to happen “around the end of the first half of 2024.” Liquidity is seen increasing to about 11 billion kronor, the airline said.

Johnson & Johnson is seeking to move a unit to Texas as it prepares for a potential third bankruptcy court filing to resolve more than 50,000 lawsuits alleging tainted talc in its baby powder caused cancer, Bloomberg News reported. The company filed a request last month with the Texas secretary of state’s office to relocate its LTL Management unit to Austin and rename it ahead of a chapter 11 filing in the state, according to the Dec. 19 filing and people familiar with the plan. J&J has put the LTL subsidiary into chapter 11 twice before in hopes of imposing a $9 billion settlement on former users of the product. Both cases, filed in J&J’s home state of New Jersey, were thrown out. The decade-long litigation, plus the prospect of potential future cancer suits, is limiting its stock price, analysts have said. J&J, based in New Brunswick, wouldn’t say where the bankruptcy case would be filed or comment on the timing, but has said it is working hard toward a resolution of its current and future talc cases. “Consistent with the plan we outlined last year following the New Jersey bankruptcy court’s dismissal of the case,” the company “continues to pursue several paths to achieve a comprehensive resolution of the talc litigation,” Erik Haas, its in-house lawyer overseeing the cases, said in a statement. He said that includes a new bankruptcy filing, as “strongly recommended” by the court.

WeWork entered bankruptcy looking to reject or amend leases that were fueling billions of dollars in losses at the flexible-workspace company. But more than two months into chapter 11, WeWork remains saddled with hundreds of leases that are straining its finances, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company has managed to reduce at least 16% or $3.7 billion of its long-term lease expenses through rejections and amendments, according to interviews with WeWork officials and its financial statements. Bankruptcy law allows companies to throw out unfavorable contracts and leases, and WeWork received court approval to reject dozens of leases since filing for bankruptcy in early November. But the company is looking to stay in many of its locations with better terms, and the threat of lease rejections has motivated landlords to come to the table to negotiate. Many landlords prefer to keep WeWork as a tenant because it would be difficult to find new ones in an office real-estate market with record-high availability rates in many metropolitan areas. But new terms have to be approved by their mortgage lenders because lower rent payments drive down property values securing the loans.

Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX's affiliate Alameda Research has dropped a lawsuit against Grayscale Investments that had accused the digital asset manager of "enriching itself at shareholders' expense," a court filing showed on Monday, Reuters reported. Alameda, which filed the lawsuit in a Delaware court in March last year, had also accused Grayscale of charging high fees and refusing to allow investors to redeem their shares from its two crypto-focused trusts, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and the Grayscale Ethereum Trust. Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein was named in the lawsuit along with parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) and its CEO, Barry Silbert. "Alameda's voluntary dismissal underscores Grayscale's position that this legal action was entirely without merit," a Grayscale spokesperson said. GBTC began trading as an exchange-traded fund earlier in the month on NYSE Arca after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved to convert its existing Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETF. Since it went bankrupt in Nov. 2022, FTX has been trying to recover assets to repay its creditors.

The world's largest crypto exchange Binance and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kicked off their oral arguments before a federal judge in Washington, D.C., yesterday in a high-profile case that could help define how cryptocurrencies are regulated, Reuters reported. Binance has asked federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson to toss out a lawsuit the SEC filed alleging Binance broke its rules, and is expected to make its case for dismissal before her on Monday. The lawsuit is one of the last major legal challenges in the U.S. facing Binance. Last year, Binance agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle with the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over illicit finance breaches, founder Chanpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money-laundering laws. But the SEC's case is still hanging over the exchange.

Terraform Labs, the company behind the stablecoin TerraUSD, which collapsed and roiled cryptocurrency markets in 2022, filed for chapter 11 protection, according to court papers filed on Sunday, Reuters reported. Singapore-based Terraform Labs, in a filing with the bankruptcy court in Delaware, listed assets and liabilities in the range of $100-$500 million. Terraform Labs said it would meet all financial obligations to employees and vendors during the chapter 11 case without requiring additional financing. It also plans to continue Web3 offerings expansion. "The filing will allow TFL to execute on its business plan while navigating ongoing legal proceedings, including representative litigation pending in Singapore and U.S. litigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)," Terraform Labs said in a statement. The SEC's civil case against Terraform and Kwon is linked to the collapse of TerraUSD, a "stablecoin" designed to maintain a constant $1 price, and the more traditional token Luna, which is closely associated with TerraUSD.

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that an independent examiner must be appointed to oversee FTX’s ongoing bankruptcy to sort out what went wrong at the cryptocurrency exchange before it collapsed, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said that the Bankruptcy Code clearly states that a bankruptcy court is required to appoint an independent examiner in cases with over $5 million in debt if one has been requested and no outside trustee has been brought in to manage the chapter 11 cases. The judges also said that it is a matter of public interest to have a report on what went wrong at FTX before it filed for bankruptcy in November 2022. “The collapse of FTX caused catastrophic losses for its worldwide investors but also raised implications for the evolving and volatile cryptocurrency industry,” the judges wrote in their opinion. “In addition to providing much-needed elucidation, the investigation and examiner’s report ensure that the Bankruptcy Court will have the opportunity to consider the greater public interest when approving the FTX Group’s reorganization plan.”

A bankruptcy judge on Friday granted Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and ex-lawyer for Donald Trump, permission to challenge a $148 million defamation verdict, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Giuliani filed for chapter 11 protection last month in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, after a federal district court ordered him to pay the damages to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. They had sued Giuliani for defamation after he accused them of meddling with President Trump’s 2020 election results in the state. Earlier this month, Giuliani asked the bankruptcy court for permission to allow him to take steps to fight or reduce the $148 million judgment, to potentially seek a new trial in district court, and, if need be, to file an appeal. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane on Friday agreed to Giuliani’s request to seek a new trial or to ask that the damages be reduced. Lane, however, stopped short of granting Giuliani permission to seek a full appeal. Lane stressed that the district court should have much discretion in deciding how to handle or whether to grant the request.

Creditor groups and several law professors on Friday called for an end to what they call "judge shopping" in a Houston, Texas, bankruptcy court that directs all large cases to a couple of judges, saying that the practice creates "the perception of a two-tiered justice system," Reuters reported. The group asked the federal judiciary to adopt a nationwide rule change that would require new "mega" bankruptcy cases with more than $100 million in debt to be randomly assigned among all judges within the district where they are filed. A uniform rule would reinforce the "impartiality" of the federal court system and prevent bankruptcy courts from competing "to attract the largest and most high-profile bankruptcy cases," the group wrote. Rules proposed from outside the judiciary are subject to many layers of review before they can potentially be adopted, a process that generally takes at least three years, a spokesman for the administrative office of the courts said on Friday. Bankruptcy courts currently have wide latitude in how they assign cases, which has sometimes allowed bankrupt companies to "effectively pick and choose the judge of their choice," according to a letter signed by eight law professors, two creditor groups and Cliff White, a former director of the U.S. Department of Justice's bankruptcy watchdog.