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Cosi Inc. is seeking to accelerate its bankruptcy case in order to have a shot at federal funds available to restaurants struggling during the pandemic, Bloomberg Law reported. The fast casual chain hopes to have a hearing on confirming its plan by June 30, according to court filings. Judge Brendan L. Shannon of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware already approved Cosi’s request for an expedited hearing on interim approval of its plan disclosures, setting the date for May 11. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund, part of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package signed into law in March, provides restaurants and bars with up to $10 million from a $28.6 billion fund. The Small Business Administration, which administers the RRF, is now accepting applications for the program. The RRF is likely to be underfunded, meaning “applicants who do not submit their applications as soon as the window for applications opens will not be approved for the grant” because the money has dried up, Cosi said in an April 30 filing. The fast casual chain previously tried for a Paycheck Protection Program loan but was thwarted when the SBA blocked bankrupt borrowers from applying. The restaurant’s push to expedite its plan isn’t surprising, as a shift in SBA policy regarding PPP applications is expected to push small, bankrupt companies toward faster plan approvals. The agency recently said businesses with court-confirmed plans aren’t “presently involved” in bankruptcy and, thus, can apply for the loans. The SBA has taken a similar stance with respect to the RRF, according to agency guidance.

Investment firms Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management submitted a sweetened offer to buy Hertz Global Holdings Inc. out of bankruptcy in a deal that could see equity investors recover $2.25 a share, Bloomberg News reported. Hertz will evaluate the proposal that assigns the rental-car company a more than $6.2 billion enterprise value to determine if it’s higher than one from its current reorganization sponsor, a group backed by Centerbridge Partners. The bid includes fully committed debt and equity financing, the people said. Hertz bondholders would be paid in full while shareholders get the chance to own a bigger portion of the reorganized company. Hertz’s existing equity holders would receive 50 cents per share plus the chance to participate in either a boosted $1.3 billion rights offering or warrants for up to 10% of the reorganized company. Together, the cash and warrants would be worth around $2.25 a share.

Brookfield Property Partners agreed to throw in the towel on three struggling malls owned by the real-estate giant, with the possibility of more to come, as it goes private in an $6.5 billion deal, according to a new report, MarketWatch.com reported. The real-estate owner recently agreed to a “friendly foreclosure,” or when a borrower willingly hands back a property to creditors, on the Florence Mall in Kentucky, the Bayshore Call in Eureka, Calif. and the Pierre Bossier Mall in Bossier City, La., with a combined $174.6 million of senior mortgage debt, according KCP Research. The KCP team also pointed to negotiations between Brookfield Property BPY, and lenders on seven other embattled malls, saddled with $797.8 million of combined senior debt, about potentially friendly foreclosures. If that happens, Brookfield would be walking away from almost $1 billion of mall debt borrowed over the years in the commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) market, a popular form of finance where Wall Street banks bundle loans on commercial properties into bonds, which are then sold to investors, often money managers, pension funds and the like. Even before the pandemic, some big-name investors were betting against debt on downtrodden malls, with the view to profit as cash flows at properties fell, borrowers defaulted and prices on mall-related securities plunged.

Toyota Motor Corp. is stockpiling up to four months of some parts. Volkswagen AG is building six factories so it can get its own batteries. And, in shades of Henry Ford, Tesla Inc. is trying to lock up access to raw materials, the Wall Street Journal reported. The hyperefficient auto supply chain symbolized by the words “just in time” is undergoing its biggest transformation in more than half a century, accelerated by the troubles car makers have suffered during the pandemic. After sudden swings in demand, freak weather and a series of accidents, they are reassessing their basic assumption that they could always get the parts they needed when they needed them. “The just-in-time model is designed for supply-chain efficiencies and economies of scale,” said Ashwani Gupta, Nissan Motor Co.’s chief operating officer. “The repercussions of an unprecedented crisis like Covid highlight the fragility of our supply-chain model.” Consider Ford Motor Co. and its F-150 pickup, the bestselling vehicle in the U.S. The latest version is crammed with technology including a hybrid gas-electric drive and automatic Tesla-style software updates. With vaccinations beginning to beat back COVID-19, customers bought around 200,000 F-150s in the first quarter of this year, its best retail start in 13 years. Yet now supply is short. Truck factories were shut down or had limited production for all of April and the slowdown will likely continue through at least mid-May. The hit to pretax profit is as much as $2.5 billion.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Acting Director Dave Uejio and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter sent notification letters yesterday to the nation’s largest apartment landlords, which collectively own more than 2 million units. The letters remind these landlords of federal protections in place to keep tenants in their homes and stop the spread of COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has extended until June 30 a temporary moratorium on evictions for non-payment of rent, and the CFPB has issued an interim final rule, which takes effect today, establishing new notice requirements under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The notification letters are the latest public action by the CFPB and the FTC in support of the CDC moratorium. The CDC order generally prohibits landlords from evicting tenants for non-payment of rent, if the tenant submits a written declaration that she is unable to afford full rental payments and would likely become homeless or have to move into a shared living setting if evicted. This prohibition applies to an agent or attorney acting on behalf of a landlord or owner of the residential property.

Household income rose at a record pace of 21.1% in March as federal-stimulus checks helped fuel an economic revival that is poised to endure with an easing pandemic, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 21.1% March surge in income was the largest monthly increase for government records tracing back to 1959, largely reflecting $1,400 stimulus checks included in President Biden’s fiscal relief package signed into law in March. The stimulus payments accounted for $3.948 trillion of the overall seasonally adjusted $4.213 trillion rise in March personal income. Spending was also up sharply, increasing 4.2%, the Commerce Department said on Friday. That was the steepest month-over-month increase since last summer.

Following minor league baseball’s constriction last year and a 2020 without revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal is proposing roughly $500 million in federal assistance for the sport, the Hartford Courant reported. “Minor league baseball is in peril,” Blumenthal said yesterday at Dunkin’ Donuts Park, home of the Hartford Yard Goats, the Double-A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. “These teams have not played since September, 2019…. The teams have struggled. Many of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. We need to come to their aide. That’s why I am leading a congressional effort. We did it for restaurants, theater, live music. Baseball deserves it as much.” Blumenthal said the fund “ought to be flexible,” and compared it to the $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Program, created to provide restaurants and bars with compensation for their reduced revenues of the past year. He cited the importance of minor league baseball to the communities, restaurants and local economies of the cities which they reside in.

A man who was charged in federal court last month after allegedly lying to obtain a $60,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan is preparing to open a taco restaurant in Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. Nathan Reardon registered the Taco Shack LLC name with the Maine secretary of state’s office on March 3, about five weeks before he was charged in U.S. District Court in Bangor with bank fraud and attempted wire fraud in a national emergency on April 8. A week later, on April 15, Reardon filed for chapter 13 bankruptcy in U.S. District Court in Maine, listing more than $280,000 in claims from more than 100 creditors. Many of them are owed wages from Reardon’s business ventures, but they also include the federal government and the states of Maine and Florida, which are owed more than $36,000 in taxes, according to Reardon’s 129-page bankruptcy filing. Reardon, who owns multiple businesses in both Maine and Florida, allegedly lied about his business’ payroll to get a $60,000 loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, and attempted to obtain additional federal funds fraudulently, in April and May of 2020. Reardon allegedly used the PPP money to pay his lawyer and a local veterinarian, make donations to a Florida church and shop online. His purchases included a men’s 14-carat yellow gold wedding band, clothing, shaving products, toys, an LED barber pole light and a pair of caiman skin cowboy boots, a federal agent’s court affidavit said. Reardon also allegedly withdrew more than $10,000 of the loan in cash. In addition, he tried to get an Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the Small Business Administration using the same false information about his business expenses, according to the affidavit filed in federal court in April.

Black homeowners are having a harder time catching up on missed mortgage payments than other borrowers, new federal research shows, the Wall Street Journal reported. The share of Black homeowners in forbearance stood at about 11% in mid-April, more than double the overall rate and that of white borrowers, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The rate for Hispanic homeowners hovered around 8.4%. The mortgage forbearance program laid out in the March 2020 stimulus bill was designed as a short-term solution, a way for homeowners to postpone payments on federally backed mortgages until the economy and consumers recovered. That is how the program has functioned for many. The share of homeowners in forbearance has decreased for eight straight weeks, to 4.49% as of mid-April, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Almost one in 10 homeowners signed up for forbearance at the height of the program’s use last June. But the overall improvement masks a slower recovery for Black borrowers. Between June 2020 and mid-April 2021, the share of Black homeowners in forbearance fell 35%, compared with a 43% drop overall, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Asian, white and Hispanic borrowers saw improvement rates of between 45% and 53%.

A big shift toward working from home is endangering hundreds of locally owned Manhattan storefronts that have been hanging on, waiting for life to return to the desolate streets of Midtown and the Financial District, the New York Times reported. The fate of these stores, and by extension the country’s two largest business hubs, will hinge in large part on how long landlords will keep offering the rent breaks that have kept many retailers afloat. Landlords themselves are under growing financial pressure as office vacancies soar and commuters and visitors stay away. At risk is Manhattan’s unique retail culture — the jewelers, barber shops, event spaces and bars — that has long brought vibrancy and familiarity to the street-level canyons of its skyscraper-filled office districts. “Right now, we’re suffering,” said Gili Vaturi, who operates Torino Jewelers on Lexington Avenue. She said her sales are still so weak that she is not covering all of her costs even with a much-reduced rent deal with her landlord, GFP Real Estate, which owns dozens of Manhattan properties and has a large minority stake in the landmark Flatiron Building. Even as the national economy snaps back, the mostly empty office buildings in Manhattan mean many storefronts have not yet seen a rebound. The stores are a crucial contributor to New York’s economy and employment. While the city is home to some of the largest companies in the world, small businesses employed about 900,000 people and made up 98 percent of all businesses before the pandemic. Employment at small service industry businesses in Manhattan neighborhoods with lots of office buildings was down 20 percent from prepandemic levels at the beginning of March, according to Gusto, which provides payroll and benefits services. In the wider New York metropolitan area, employment at such businesses is down much less, 6 percent. “Right now, small business jobs are disappearing from cities — and may never come back even after the vaccination is widespread and the economy fully reopens,” said Luke Pardue, an economist at Gusto.