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Men’s Wearhouse owner Tailored Brands Inc. is seeking a lifeline to help it stay afloat less than three months after it emerged from bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg News reported. Tailored Brands has “severely underperformed” compared to the projections in its chapter 11 reorganization plan and needs roughly $75 million by the beginning of March to avoid a default, according to court papers. The company has arranged a tentative deal with Silver Point Capital, its largest equity holder and a lender, to provide the funds and help it avoid another bankruptcy, according to a notice from Mohsin Meghji of M-III Partners. Plans call for $25 million of funds that rank equal to an existing term loan and $50 million of subordinated debt, documents show. The $50 million loan would be converted to equity within three years at $1 per share. A representative for Tailored Brands said in a statement to Bloomberg that the company has been in talks to raise additional money to help it execute its strategic plan and expects to close the deal next week. The retailer “has exceeded the forecasts shared with prospective investors in every week of the past two-and-a-half months,” according to the statement.

Waves of bankruptcies triggered by the coronavirus pandemic will wipe as much as $1 trillion from the value of global corporate debt markets, the Bank for International Settlements warned, Bloomberg News reported. Company insolvencies “are expected to rise as measures to support credit are wound back, new consumption habits and business practices accelerate the downsizing of specific sectors,” the BIS wrote in a quarterly report published on Monday. “The looming increase in corporate bankruptcies will generate credit losses that will need to be absorbed, either by the financial system or by taxpayers.” The somber outlook comes a year after the pandemic threw credit markets into a tailspin and constrained access to funding for essential expenses like payrolls and inventory. And while market valuations have broadly recovered, more pain lies ahead for weaker companies, according to the BIS, which is known as the central bank for central banks. It will be an uneven blow, meanwhile. Losses in the recreation sector, which came to a standstill as governments imposed restrictions on travel and leisure to slow the spread of the virus, are projected to increase more than 8 percentage points compared to the 2018-19 period, according to the report.

AMC Entertainment Holdings said that it has approved millions in bonuses to its top executives and eligible employees as a means to preserve stockholder value during the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. In a regulatory filing on Friday, the company said Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron would receive $3.75 million as bonus, while other top executives are entitled to bonuses of $173,000 to $507,000. The move comes at a time when cinema chains like AMC have taken a blow due to coronavirus-led restrictions that caused delays in film releases. The company staved off bankruptcy through a debt restructuring deal last year. Shares of the Leawood, Kansas-based company were also one of the “stonks” whose wild ride captivated investors several weeks ago and during which its share price surged more than 860% compared with the beginning of the year, at its highest.

The Federal Reserve and other bank regulators are flashing a new warning sign for the U.S. economy: Businesses ravaged by Covid-19 are sitting on $1 trillion of debt and a high percentage of it is at risk of going bust, Bloomberg News reported. Watchdogs flagged 29.2% of complex corporate lending as troubled in 2020, up from 13.5% in 2019, according to a report released yesterday by the Fed and other agencies. Real estate, entertainment, transportation, oil and gas, and retail were cited as particular problem areas. A “disproportionate share” of the riskiest loans were held by nonbanks, such as investment funds that engage in leveraged lending, insurers and pension funds, the regulators added. “While risk has increased, many agent banks have strengthened their risk management systems since the prior downturn and are better equipped to measure and mitigate risks associated with loans in the current environment,” the Fed, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in a statement that accompanied the release of their Shared National Credit Review. Still, banks’ share of the weakest loans has also been rising, with some of their holdings -- particularly those associated with oil and gas -- facing credit downgrades during the pandemic, the report found. Banks’ percentage of borrowings deemed below the standards preferred by regulators increased to 45% from 35% a year earlier. For their report, the Fed and other agencies evaluated $5.1 trillion in complex lending involving multiple firms, with half of it representing leveraged loans. Real estate, entertainment, transportation, oil and gas, and retail represented 21.6% of the lending that the regulators examined. The 29.2% of “non-pass loans” highlighted in the report represent those the agencies categorize as meriting “special mention,” being substandard or at risk of triggering losses for lenders. During the pandemic, the debt load involving leveraged lending -- borrowings by the riskiest companies -- has been on the upswing. In so-called syndicated loans backing U.S. acquisitions, leverage surged to at least a five-year high in the fourth quarter, according to Covenant Review.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yesterday introduced the COVID-19 Bankruptcy Relief Extension Act, bipartisan legislation to temporarily extend COVID-19 bankruptcy relief provisions enacted as part of the March 2020 CARES Act and December 2020 omnibus appropriations bill. The bill would extend for an additional year CARES Act bankruptcy provisions that are set to expire on March 27, 2021. Click here to read the full press release on the legislations provisions.

Get the insight, analysis and statistics you need on the Small Business Reorganization Act and subchapter V elections by visiting ABI’s SBRA Resources website.

In a blow to Democrats, the Senate parliamentarian ruled the chamber cannot include President Joe Biden’s proposed $15-an-hour minimum wage in a $1.9 trillion coronavirus bill the party aims to pass without Republican votes, Reuters reported. Democrats and progressives had hoped to include the minimum wage increase in the legislation to help cushion the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic and better compensate low-wage workers who have spent months on the front lines of the health crisis as essential workers. Democrats are trying to advance the COVID-19 bill under a special “budget reconciliation” process that would allow them to pass it in the Senate using a simple majority, so they will not need Republican support. But there are rules that limit what can be included using that process, and it is the job of Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to determine what is allowed.

The Biden administration expanded unemployment insurance eligibility Thursday to include workers who refused job offers at unsafe worksites, making good on a pledge to reduce the pressure on people who say they have been forced to choose between staying healthy or getting a paycheck, the Washington Post reported. The Department of Labor made the shift Thursday in response to a January executive order from President Biden that broadened the eligibility of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) to include workers whose unemployment benefits were denied because they refused to return to workplaces that were not in compliance with coronavirus health and safety standards or turned down positions because of those concerns. The change in eligibility goes into effect immediately, but officials cautioned that it could take at least a month, if not longer, for workers’ claims to be approved, given the significant delays that have plagued state unemployment agencies. Workers eligible under the new guidelines will receive backdated payments for unemployment claims dating to the beginning of the pandemic, when the PUA program was created to help gig workers, self-employed workers and others who stopped working to take care sick of a sick relative or take care of a school-aged child. They will also be eligible for the supplemental $600 a week bonus that the federal government has approved through the end of July.

Department store chain Belk Inc. won bankruptcy-court approval to cut $450 million in debt, emerging from a prepackaged chapter 11 case less than 24 hours after it was filed, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. After filing for chapter 11 protection on Tuesday, Belk won approval for its restructuring plan yesterday from Judge Marvin Isgur in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Belk’s sprint through chapter 11 was one of just a handful of cases that were completed in under 24 hours. Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the law firm representing Belk in the bankruptcy case, said the pre-packaged restructuring was completed in less than 21 hours, faster than other recent Kirkland cases that were quickly turned around, including catalog retailer Fullbeauty Brands Inc. and Sungard Availability Services LP, an information-technology services provider. Superfast bankruptcies like Belk’s are rare. Only a handful of companies have been able to go in and out of bankruptcy in a 24- or 48-hour time frame, including Fullbeauty, which set the previous record in 2019 for the least time between the filing of a chapter 11 petition and confirmation of an exit plan. Charlotte, N.C.-based Belk, however, is using bankruptcy solely to restructure its debt while paying vendors in full and assuming the leases at its 291 stores, all of which are staying open, according to court papers. Judge Isgur expressed concern at Wednesday’s court hearing about whether all creditors were properly notified in advance of the planned bankruptcy and had enough time to raise objections. Justice Department bankruptcy monitors objected to Belk’s sprint through bankruptcy, saying the company was racing through the process too quickly without giving creditors and others who might have an interest in the chapter 11 case enough time to respond or object.