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FTX Trading Ltd. is considering proposals from three bidders to restart trading on what had been one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges before the company sank into bankruptcy amid fraud allegations, Bloomberg News reported. The company will make a decision about how to proceed by mid-December, the company’s investment banker, Kevin M. Cofsky of Perella Weinberg Partners, said Tuesday during a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware. FTX is negotiating details of potentially binding offers with investors, Cofsky said. Options include selling the entire exchange, including a valuable list of more than 9 million customers, or bringing in a partner to help restart the exchange, Cofsky told US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey. FTX is also mulling a reboot of the trading platform on its own, he said. “We are engaging with multiple parties every day,” Cofsky said, without disclosing the names of the bidders. Since filing for bankruptcy last year, FTX has been trying to raise money to repay creditors. FTX’s administrators have so far recovered about $7 billion in assets, including $3.4 billion of crypto, according to court documents.

A senior-living company filed for bankruptcy this week after it exhausted an emergency loan, the latest to falter because of COVID-19, Bloomberg News reported. Nashville Senior Care LLC’s plight illustrates the pressures bearing down on the senior-living sector. Higher staff and supply costs on top of tepid demand for such facilities have caused defaults to outpace the rest of the municipal bond market this year. About 8% of the $43 billion in outstanding senior-living bonds is in default, compared with less than 1% of the total municipal bond market, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At Nashville Senior Care, the pandemic shutdown lowered the number of residents “precipitously,” while expenses rose “dramatically,” leaving the facilities without the means to make needed investments, executive director Thomas Johnson said in a court filing. “This difficult combination of rising costs and a lower census, coupled with a high debt load from their financing, led to the Debtors’ default under their bond documents,” added Johnson, founder of the nonprofit Trousdale Foundation, which owns the facilities. The operator of five senior living facilities and one home health company in Tennessee, Florida and Ohio listed assets of $50 million to $100 million and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million, including about $213 million in municipal bond debt. Its bonds have been hit hard by the pandemic. A bond, issued by Highlands County Health Facilities Authority, due in 2038 with a 6% coupon traded at 12 cents in June.

Federal judges in the Southern District of Texas have agreed to let a different court hear any lawsuits against U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones — including the case that revealed his previously undisclosed relationship with a bankruptcy lawyer and prompted his resignation, Reuters reported. Chief U.S. District Judge Randy Crane in an order on Friday said that his counterpart in the Western District of Texas, Chief U.S. District Judge Alia Moses, had consented to the referral of all cases against Judge Jones to her. Moses, in turn, may either hear those cases herself or assign them to another judge on her court. While Crane did not give an explanation for his order, courts often transfer cases to other jurisdictions when there is a potential conflict. Just two lawsuits are pending against Judge Jones, both by self-represented litigants. One of them, by a former shareholder of energy company McDermott International, helped prompt Judge Jones' announced resignation on Oct. 15. McDermott had gone through a chapter 11 restructuring approved by the Houston-based bankruptcy judge in 2020. The Oct. 4 lawsuit, by former shareholder Michael Van Deelen, accused Jones of failing to disclose his relationship with a partner at Jackson Walker, a local law firm that handled many bankruptcy cases in Jones' courthouse, including that of McDermott.

Bankrupt Cyxtera Technologies Inc. is in advanced talks to sell a large swath of its data centers to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, Bloomberg News reported. As part of its chapter 11 filing, Cyxtera has been looking at two possible tracks, either recapitalizing itself, with lenders taking control of the firm, or selling itself. Cxytera’s and Brookfield Infrastructure Partners’s negotiations are continuing and could still fall apart. Brookfield Infrastructure Partners has been building its data center holdings, with recent acquisitions of European firm Data4 and Compass Datacenters LLC. It also owns Dawn Acquisitions LLC, which does business as Evoque Data Center Solutions. Digital Realty Trust Inc. has also shown interest in some of Cxytera’s assets, Bloomberg previously reported. Prior to its June bankruptcy, Cyxtera had entered negotiations with lenders on how to tackle nearly $870 million of debt due next year. The company was formed in 2017 after CenturyLink’s data center and co-location business was combined with Medina Capital’s security and data analytics operations. In 2021, Cyxtera combined with a black-check firm in a deal valuing the combined company at about $3.4 billion on an enterprise basis.

Hello Bello, the environmentally-friendly diaper and baby products startup founded by two TV stars, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to sell its business after its pandemic-fueled expansion faltered due to rising shipping costs and inflation, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Unconditional Love, the company behind Hello Bello, founded in 2019 by actors Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, quickly gained popularity to become the biggest direct-to-consumer diaper brand by 2021. The company’s net sales reached $200 million by 2021 when it signed up 130,000 subscribers, according to court papers filed by Chief Executive Erica Buxton. Shepard and Bell are listed as holders of more than 12% of the company’s common equity, according to a court filing. The company has a deal to sell itself to New York-based investment firm Hildred Capital Management. An investment in 2020 by private-equity firm VMG Partners helped the startup expand its product offerings as well as its reach beyond Walmart, its first retail partner, to grocery, drug and specialty retailers in the U.S. and overseas, according to the court filing. In addition to diapers, training pants and baby products the company also sells sanitizers and vitamin gummies.

Helicopter ambulance company Air Methods Corp. filed for chapter 11 protection after it struggled to overcome a changing regulatory environment combined with higher interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Air Methods listed assets and liabilities between $1 billion and $10 billion in a petition filed in the Southern District of Texas on Tuesday. A majority of its first-lien lenders, bondholders and its shareholders have agreed on a restructuring plan to cut debt by about $1.7 billion, according to a company statement. A group of first-lien lenders committed to provide $80 million of debtor-in-possession financing, it said. The closely-held company has been holding talks with creditors after missing an interest payment on its debt, Bloomberg previously reported. Its profits have been slashed by rising costs, rising interest rates and federal legislation aimed at protecting people from unexpected medical bills. Private equity firm American Securities acquired the company in 2017. Air Methods expects to complete the restructuring by year end, it said in the statement.

While logistics visibility platform provider Slync had hoped that new management and a $24 million cash infusion in February would be enough to save the FreightTech company after its former CEO was indicted on fraud charges, the company filed for bankruptcy Wednesday and plans to wind down operations and sell off its technology, Freight Waves reported. The timing of Slync’s bankruptcy filing comes nearly three weeks after former Slync CEO Chris Kirchner — who was indicted in May on charges he swindled $25 million from investors for personal use — filed suit on Sept. 26 against his former employer for legal fee advancement and indemnification in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. Kirchner’s suit seeks to have Slync pay his legal bills in his ongoing fraud case involving the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities Exchange Commission. After Kirchner’s assets were frozen, a federal public defender was assigned to handle his case. According to court documents, after Kirchner’s legal team initially reached out to Slync’s outside counsel on Aug. 30, Slync stated that it “will agree to advance” and that his legal team should reach out to Slync’s CEO John Urban “regarding logistics.” However, less than three weeks later, Slync’s outside counsel told Kirchner’s legal team that Slync “purportedly lacks sufficient liquidity to fund advancement.”

Metropolitan Brewing LLC filed for bankruptcy this month, citing, among other debts, $1 million in back rent owed to its landlord, the Chicago Business Journal reported. According to an Oct. 3 bankruptcy filing in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, the Chicago Brewery owes back rent to Rockwell Properties LLC for its 33,000-square-foot site at 3057 N. Rockwell St. Founded in 2008, Metropolitan Brewing signed a 15-year lease for its current location in 2015. The million-dollar figure for back rent is in dispute, however, according to the Chicago Tribune, and will need to be forgiven in full or in part in order for the company to restructure. If Metropolitan Brewing is unable to rework its debt, the business may have to sell or liquidate, said owners Doug and Tracy Hurst. In addition to back rent, Metropolitan Brewing’s debts cited in the filing include $1 million to North Carolina-based Live Oak Banking Co. for an equipment loan and $386,000 to the Small Business Administration for an Economic Impact Disaster Loan. The brewery currently has eight full-time and 14 part-time employees, and last year grossed $2.16 million, according to the report.

Signa Sports United has closed its U.S. offices, which included operations for the Vitus and Nukeproof bike brands and the Hotlines wholesale distribution business, all based in Park City. Signa, headquartered in Berlin, announced earlier this week that it had lost access to a 150 million euro ($159 million) equity commitment from its parent company, BicycleRetailer.com reported. The company has reported serious liquidity challenges and had begun the process of delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. It announced Friday that is preparing to make insolvency filings for its various subsidiaries in the coming days. Tennis-Point GmbH, a Germany-based e-commerce retailer owned by Signa, already has filed for insolvency in Germany. Signa owns the Vitus and Nukeproof brands and the CRC/Wiggle cycling e-commerce sites, along with an array of other e-commerce sites in the tennis, camping and team sports markets. Signa's parent company is controlled by René Benko, an Austrian billionaire.

The judge in Alex Jones’s bankruptcy case ruled on Thursday that he will not be allowed to use his chapter 11 filing to evade paying more than $1 billion in verdicts to families of the Sandy Hook shooting, the New York Times reported. The ruling by Judge Christopher Lopez in a Houston bankruptcy court means that Mr. Jones, the Infowars conspiracy broadcaster, will likely be working the rest of his life to pay his debt to the families. Last year, they were awarded historic damages in defamation lawsuits against him. It also closes off the possibility that Mr. Jones could liquidate Infowars and force the families to accept whatever proceeds result, leaving him free to start a new business. Earlier this year, the families asked that Judge Lopez order Mr. Jones to pay them the full damage awards, with no possibility of a trial or a forced settlement over a lesser amount — in legal terms, to make Mr. Jones’s debts to the families “non-dischargeable” through bankruptcy.