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The Senate yesterday confirmed Janet L. Yellen, a labor economist and former Federal Reserve chair, to be Treasury secretary, putting in place a key lieutenant to President Biden at a perilous economic moment, as the new administration tries to revive an economy that has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Times reported. By a vote of 84 to 15, the Senate confirmed Yellen, making her the first woman to hold the top job at Treasury in its 232-year history. Her quick bipartisan confirmation underscored the support she has from both Republicans and Democrats given her previous stint as Fed chair from 2014 to 2018. Yellen now faces a new and considerable challenge. As Treasury secretary, she will be responsible for helping Biden prepare the $1.9 trillion stimulus package he has proposed, steer it through Congress and — if it is approved — oversee the deployment of trillions of dollars of relief money.

Sycamore’s Belk Inc. is nearing a deal to file for bankruptcy with plans to hand an ownership stake to lenders, Bloomberg News reported. The deal would take the department store chain through a pre-arranged restructuring of its debt, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the private talks. The terms aren’t final and could still change. The company has been working with Kirkland & Ellis and Lazard Ltd., Bloomberg earlier reported, while Willkie Farr & Gallagher and PJT Partners Inc. are advising a so-called crossholder group that includes large second-lien loan holders along with first-lien lenders and is led by Blackstone Credit. Department stores have struggled as shoppers have defected to specialized retailers and new online competitors. Closures because of COVID-19 and customers’ reduced desire to shop amid the pandemic have only heightened the pain. To cope with the situation, Charlotte, N.C.-based Belk delayed and halted payments to some vendors, Bloomberg previously reported. William Henry Belk opened his first store, called The New York Racket, in 1888. The mid-priced chain bought up other department store locations, primarily in the South, to grow to almost 300 locations in 16 states.

Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. rose almost 26% after the movie theater giant said it signed deals for $917 million in financing to survive the COVID-19 pandemic for months longer without resorting to bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Investment deals signed by the embattled movie theater chain have brought in $411 million in debt financing and $506 million in equity since mid-December as AMC took advantage of equity markets’ robust appetite for risk and a thirst for returns in fixed income that has driven yield on the riskiest junk debt to record lows. Investors have proven willing to support struggling companies during the pandemic, even those that have been hit hard by social-distancing and travel restrictions, such as theaters, cruise lines and hotels. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has given investors incentive to keep beaten-down companies like AMC afloat and help them avoid a costly debt default or bankruptcy, though the sluggish vaccination rollout also poses a risk. With the deals announced yesterday, AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said that the possible bankruptcy filing the company had previously warned about was now “completely off the table.” The company said its financial runway has now been extended deep into 2021 and that while an increase in cinema attendance seems likely, the future course of the coronavirus meant that cash needs remained uncertain.

Eagle Hospitality Trust, the Singapore-based group that operates the iconic Queen Mary and the Sheraton Pasadena, has filed for chapter 11 protection, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported. In total, more than two dozen hotels and other properties were part of the filing by the company, which has more than $500 million in debt. Eagle Hospitality stopped trading on the Singapore Stock Exchange in 2019 after defaulting on a loan from Bank of America. While the company operates the Queen Mary, the city of Long Beach owns the property, and Eagle Hospitality has a ground lease. The Queen Mary has been closed to the public since May due to the pandemic. Investment firm Urban Commons signed a lease to run the Queen Mary in 2016. In 2019, it created Eagle Hospitality Trust but ran into trouble. In the fall, the group ended its master lease agreements for Urban Commons hotels.

The apartment business has weathered the COVID-19 pandemic better than most of the real-estate sector. That is starting to change, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Owners of multifamily buildings are falling behind on loan payments. Banks view a greater number of rental loans as high risk, and fewer lenders are available to help struggling developers with financing. Eviction protections, lower rent collections and unprecedented declines in the asking rent in some urban markets are also taking their toll on apartment owners. Niche corners of the multifamily business that were popular with investors before the pandemic are now some of the worst off. Ratings companies have downgraded bonds tied to senior-housing and student-housing properties, and some co-living companies, where tenants lease rooms in shared apartments, are also struggling. Earlier this month, the co-living operator Quarters closed all of its U.S. operations, filing for 10 bankruptcies. But the traditional rental-apartment business is showing cracks, too. During the pandemic, the share of total apartment debt that banks place into their highest-risk categories has ballooned to 16.9% from 4.6%, according to a December report from Trepp LLC, a real-estate data firm that compiled risk ratings from more than a dozen major banks.

President Joe Biden will escalate appeals for Congress to back his top priority, $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief, seeking to overcome Republican opposition to the plan as he enters his first full week in office, Bloomberg News reported. Biden’s top economic adviser, Brian Deese, spent more than an hour on Sunday discussing the proposal with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Some asked the White House to further justify what would be the second-largest emergency spending measure in U.S. history and expressed interest in a much narrower bill focused on accelerating coronavirus vaccine distribution, according to Senator Angus King of Maine and people familiar with the matter. Deese and other officials provided details and context in response to the senators’ questions, according to an administration official. Senior White House aides plan to keep talking with lawmakers in both parties this week to hear their concerns but also press for urgent action, the official said. As the president’s team began its work with key lawmakers, Biden is moving forward with another round of executive actions, following on a series of orders signed soon after he took office. On Monday, he will sign an order directing federal agencies to buy more American-made products and is expected to take other actions on criminal justice, climate, health care and immigration. The new orders will add to roughly two dozen actions Biden has signed since Inauguration Day in an effort to address the coronavirus pandemic, reverse former President Donald Trump’s agenda and point the nation in a new direction.

Movie theater giant AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. signed deals for $917 million in financing to survive the Covid-19 pandemic for months longer without resorting to bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. AMC, the world’s largest movie theater chain, said it had executed a commitment letter for $411 million in debt financing through increasing the size of and refinancing a European credit facility while raising $506 million in equity since mid-December. “This means that any talk of an imminent bankruptcy for AMC is completely off the table,” said Chief Executive Adam Aron. The company had warned about its risk of bankruptcy since late last year. With the deals, AMC said that its financial runway has now been extended deep into 2021 and that while an increase in cinema attendance seems likely, the future course of the coronavirus means the company’s cash needs remain uncertain. The company also said that it presumed it would continue to make progress in negotiations with theater landlords over lease payments. Investors have been willing to keep AMC afloat even as it burned cash and theaters stayed largely dark as infections surged late last year. The pandemic has hit AMC hard as restrictions on indoor gathering forced the company to temporarily close most of its more than 1,000 theaters world-wide. AMC and its peers also face a challenge from major Hollywood studios that have either delayed releasing films or released them straight to streaming services during the pandemic, leaving cinemas with little content to show those viewers willing and able to brave a trip to the big screen. Warner Bros. said earlier this month that it would release its entire 2021 slate of films simultaneously in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service, a drastic step in eliminating the exclusivity that theater chains have enjoyed for decades.

State and local governments face a $225 billion shortfall for the coming fiscal year, according to a study from the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy priorities, The Hill reported. The study estimated that the governments' revenues, which had in recent months come in higher than expected, were still 7.8 percent below pre-coronavirus estimates. Once federal aid was taken into account, states, localities, tribal nations and territories were left about $300 billion short of revenues. States still have an estimated $75 billion in rainy day funds that could be used to plug some of those holes. President Biden has requested $350 billion in state and local aid as part of his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, a figure that is likely to be pared back in negotiations with Republicans. Other relief efforts and proposals have sought to address some of the additional costs states face, such as education costs, funding related to the coronavirus and various public health measures. The study noted that shortfalls among state and local governments had already contributed to 1.4 million jobs lost since the pandemic took hold, including 177,000 in the fourth quarter alone.

One year after the coronavirus pandemic first disrupted global supply chains by closing Chinese factories, fresh shipping headaches are delaying U.S. farm exports, crimping domestic manufacturing and threatening higher prices for American consumers, the Washington Post reported. The cost of shipping a container of goods has risen by 80 percent since early November and has nearly tripled over the past year, according to the Freightos Baltic Index. The increase reflects dramatic shifts in consumption during the pandemic, as consumers redirect money they once spent at restaurants or movie theaters to the purchase of record amounts of imported clothing, computers, furniture and other goods. That abrupt and unprecedented spending shift has upended long-standing trade patterns, causing bottlenecks from the gates of Chinese factories to the doorsteps of U.S. homes. At the Port of Los Angeles one day last week, 42 ships were anchored offshore, waiting to unload their cargoes, even as every warehouse within 60 miles was already full. A shortage of dock workers amid California’s worsening coronavirus outbreak is further complicating operations; inbound cargo volumes in December were more than 23 percent higher than one year earlier.