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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it has concerns about Coinbase Global Inc.’s proposed involvement in Celsius Network’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Under the proposed plan, Celsius agreed to engage Coinbase to distribute assets to international customers. In a filing on Friday, the SEC — which charged Coinbase earlier this year with operating as an unregistered securities exchange, broker and clearing house — said the agreements “go far beyond the services of a distribution agent, contemplating brokerage services and master trading services that implicate many of the concerns” raised in its suit. Celsius filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2022, and is working to emerge as a new user-owned company and distribute an estimated $2 billion of Bitcoin and Ether as part of the plan. Celsius wants to start fresh under new management led by investment firm Arrington Capital, part of a consortium called Fahrenheit LLC that won the crypto lender’s assets at a bankruptcy auction earlier this year.

Instant Brands, the Illinois-based bankrupt maker of the Instant Pot pressure cooker and Pyrex glassware, has drawn interest for different parts of its business from parties including Centre Lane Partners and hedge fund Citadel, Bloomberg News reported. Citadel has offered to purchase loan holdings from existing lenders at around 7 cents on the dollar. It’s asking those who don’t want to sell to team up in a potential bid for certain assets, such as the housewares business. That would allow lenders to use debt they’re owed toward purchasing the company’s assets out of bankruptcy. Its subsidiary Citadel Advisors owns about $7.4 million in loans to Instant Brands on behalf of funds and accounts managed by it, according to a June court filing. It’s part of a group of lenders that own or manage roughly $258.1 million in terms loans to the kitchen goods maker. Meanwhile, private equity firm Centre Lane is considering a bid for the appliance unit, said some of the people. Deliberations are fluid and there is no certainty that the parties will proceed with a final bid.

Wichita-based Pioneer Balloon Co. filed chapter 11 protection on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Kansas, the Wichita Business Journal reported. The 106-year-old company filed under the corporate names Continental American Corp. and affiliate Pioneer National Latex Inc., both located at 5000 E. 29th Street N. Under Continental American Corp., the company claims liabilities of more than $23 million, with more than $5 million owed in wages and $18 million in services and goods, according to court filings. It estimates assets between $50 million and $100 million. There are less than 1,000 creditors, according to the filing, with the largest individual creditors located outside the Wichita area. Pioneer Balloon manufactures latex balloons and hosts international balloon conventions. In addition, the company has listed several inter-company loans. These include $1.4 million owed to Pioneer Automation Technologies in El Dorado and $600,000 to Emily's Bubble Company, also in El Dorado.

Noble House Home Furnishings joined the ranks of furniture suppliers to file for bankruptcy earlier this month, with the company blaming cost inflation and past supply chain disruptions, among other challenges, Retail Dive reported. When the company filed for chapter 11, it owed suppliers and warehousers in its supply chain some $10 million from the period leading up to its bankruptcy, according to a court filing. Trade debts from importers and vendors in China and Vietnam make up a majority of the largest claims by the company’s unsecured creditors. Since filing, Noble House asked for and received court permission to make emergency payments to keep its suppliers in good stead and prevent warehousers from seizing inventory. Without the ability to pay claims to vendors as they arise, Noble House would face “significant disruption to [the company’s] operations at this critical time,” it said in the filing. Founded in 1992, the family-owned company drop-ships merchandise for some of the largest retailers in the U.S., including Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Wayfair, Overstock, Target and Home Depot, the company’s current CFO, Gayla Bella, said in court papers. Among its wholesale customers are off-price giants Ross Stores and TJX Cos.

Rite Aid is negotiating with creditors over the terms of a bankruptcy plan that would include liquidating a substantial portion of its more than 2,100 drugstores, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Rite Aid has proposed to close roughly 400 to 500 stores in bankruptcy, and either sell or let creditors take over its remaining operations. A group of bondholders would prefer to liquidate a larger number of stores. The two sides are in discussions over the number of stores to be closed, they said. The Philadelphia-based company faces more than $3.3 billion in debt and over a thousand federal lawsuits alleging it oversupplied opioids. A number of its stores are stuck in uneconomical long-term leases that the company can’t get out of, making bankruptcy an effective tool to shed them. The company, which competes with larger drugstore players CVS and Walgreens, plans to conduct an auction process in an effort to sell its Elixir pharmacy unit and other valuable parts of the business. Most of the federal opioid lawsuits against Rite Aid have been consolidated into a multidistrict litigation in Ohio. The company also faces similar cases pending in state courts that allege it contributed to the opioid epidemic, as well as a civil lawsuit by the Justice Department that alleges the company dispensed controlled substances in violation of the False Claims Act and Controlled Substances Act.

The company that has been sued by various states for alleged deceptive business practices surrounding 40-listing agreements, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 33 states, the Real Deal reported. Florida-based MV Realty came under scrutiny for allegedly paying homeowners a few hundred dollars in exchange for the right to be the listing agent in the event a homeowner decided to sell their home. Under the 40-year contracts, MV Realty would receive money if the company sold the property, the homeowner canceled the agreement or if the property was transferred in some other way, including foreclosure or a transfer when the owner dies. The contracts also allegedly permitted MV Realty to obtain mortgages on the homes, unbeknownst to the homeowners. North Carolina, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, among others, have sued MV Realty for alleged deceptive, unfair trade practices. The lawsuits in every state seek to stop MV Realty from entering into new contracts, void the existing contracts and have courts assign civil penalties to the company. MV Realty, which operates in 33 states nationwide, previously denied it engaged in any false or deceptive practices.

FTX Chief Executive and Restructuring Officer John J. Ray, whose team is overseeing a mammoth asset recovery task after the crypto exchange’s collapse, is accelerating efforts to recoup billion of dollars just weeks before FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried heads to trial for what has been called one of the biggest financial frauds in American history, Bloomberg News reported. The week started off in bankruptcy court, where FTX sued Bankman-Fried’s parents on Monday to “recover millions of dollars in fraudulently transferred and misappropriated funds.” The lawsuit claims that Allan Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried exploited their access and influence within FTX to “enrich themselves, directly and indirectly, by millions of dollars,” at the expense of the debtors and creditors. On Thursday, FTX Trading Ltd. sued four former employees of Salameda Ltd., a Hong Kong-incorporated affiliate of FTX, to recoup $153 million of transfers that they received just before the crypto trading platform collapsed. The former employees used their personal connections to prioritize withdrawals of their funds and digital assets from FTX once it became clear last November that the company was in trouble, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

American Physician Partners, which until recently provided outsourced emergency room services to 150 U.S. hospitals, said Thursday that a ban on so-called "surprise" medical bills hastened the company's descent into bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The company's chief restructuring officer John DiDonato said at a Thursday bankruptcy court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, that the 2020 No Surprises Act hampered the company's ability to raise revenue and recover from the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The law was passed to protect patients from surprise billing for care from providers outside their insurers' network. Insurers pay a much lower share of the cost of out-of-network providers than in-network providers. Before the No Surprises Act, providers typically billed patients for the balance of the cost. DiDonato on Thursday said although the law was motivated by a "sound" policy goal, it has unexpectedly worsened negotiations between healthcare providers and insurers who "unilaterally" refuse or delay payment for medical care. The private equity-backed company, which once employed 2,500 physicians, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday after transitioning all of its medical services to new contractors and winding down operations. It has more than $570 million in debt. "The No Surprises Act had the unintended consequence of shifting the balance of power toward insurers," DiDonato told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon. "Surprise" billing had been particularly prevalent for emergency department visits, when patients would visit a hospital that was part of their insurance network but later receive a bill for out-of-network care from doctors who are not part of the same insurance network as the hospital. About 70% of emergency departments in the U.S. are outsourced, according to American Physician Partners' court filings. The company said that it did not bill patients for costs not covered by insurance. But the regulations implementing the ban have encouraged insurers to unilaterally reduce or deny payments, funneling cost disputes into a slow and ineffective "independent dispute resolution" process, according to the company's court filings.

Small-time crypto traders who invested with Celsius Network have been going toe-to-toe with legal and financial heavyweights — and notching some unlikely victories — as the company works to wrap up its bankruptcy case, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Much like the online users who banded together to defeat hedge funds’ short bets on AMC Entertainment, retail investors with crypto trapped on the Celsius platform are punching above their weight in the bankruptcy. Among the unlikely combatants: a superyacht stewardess in California, a fundraiser for a progressive nonprofit in Maryland, a college student in Florida, and a crypto influencer in New York who creates digital designs for customized mugs and T-shirts. While most bankruptcies unfold away from public view, hundreds of customers of Celsius have dissected every development online, in real-time and granular detail. Largely acting without lawyers, the crypto owners have caught a mistake by the company’s bankruptcy advisers, publicized confidential company information obtained from employees and faced down big institutional investors also scavenging for its limited assets.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided In re TransCare Corp., No. 21-2547; 21-2576, affirming rulings from the United States District and Bankruptcy Courts for the Southern District of New York, which found that Lynn Tilton — the sole director and indirect owner of TransCare Corp. (the debtor) — breached her fiduciary duties to the debtor and caused other entities she directly and indirectly owned and controlled to engage in an actual fraudulent transfer of the debtor's assets, according to a Reuters commentary. In reaching its decision, the 2nd Circuit joined the 4th, 5th, 8th, and 9th Circuits in holding that a finding of fraudulent intent for purposes of a fraudulent transfer is reviewed for clear error — not de novo.