%1

A Brentwood, Pa., restaurant ordered to close for ignoring COVID-19 masking requirements has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The Crack’d Egg filed the petition on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Pittsburgh, and it will continue to operate while the owners reorganize. The restaurant, owned by Kimberly Waigand, made headlines last month after the Allegheny County Health Department ordered it to close for flouting COVID-19 masking rules. In response, the restaurant filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Health Department. The shutdown order and the lawsuit have been stayed while the bankruptcy case proceeds. Attorneys said the restaurant’s financial woes are largely due to a loss in revenue following statewide COVID-19 mitigation rules that reduced maximum restaurant capacity to 25 percent. According to the restaurant’s bankruptcy filing, it owes nearly $445,000 in unsecured debt to its creditors. The largest amount, $350,000, comes from Waigand’s husband, Donald. The money for the investment came from a settlement Waigand received after he was in an accident, Cooney said. The restaurant has been under scrutiny since Allegheny County sought its closure after inspectors repeatedly saw employees without face masks, a health violation under the COVID-19 guidelines.

Apollo Global Management Inc. won court approval to provide a $1 billion bankruptcy loan for Grupo Aeromexico SAB, paving the way for the airline to proceed with its restructuring plans, Bloomberg News reported. The decision resolves a clash between Apollo and a group of bondholders while bolstering Aeromexico’s efforts to weather an unprecedented collapse in air travel. The disagreement had prompted a bankruptcy court in New York to delay a key hearing on the debtor-in-possession financing four times. Under the new pact, the minority lenders will be able to decide whether they want to convert their loans into equity, Timothy Graulich, a lawyer for Aeromexico, said Friday at the hearing. As the majority lender, Apollo will also be able to convert. Aeromexico, which unlike U.S. airlines hasn’t received government aid to help it through the coronavirus pandemic, filed for court protection three months ago as demand for flights tumbled. The airline’s passenger totals are still less than half their year-ago levels, with customers on lucrative international flights down 84 percent last month.

Democratic and White House negotiators resumed discussions over a sweeping coronavirus relief deal Thursday, but gave no indication they were closer to a breakthrough in resolving deep-seated disputes that led President Trump to end the negotiations earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported. Few on Capitol Hill were optimistic that Congress and the White House would reach an agreement before the Nov. 3 election. Still, negotiations that had been frozen showed signs of life after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) yesterday ruled out moving forward with special support for the battered airline industry without a broader agreement. In a call yesterday afternoon, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made clear that Trump was interested in reaching an agreement on a broader bill, according to Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill, and an administration official. The White House has gone back and forth on how broad a deal to pursue. After ruling out more talks on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said Tuesday evening and reiterated in recent days that he would support individual relief bills, including aid for airlines and another round of direct checks. The two sides have been at odds over how much money to spend, as well as how to allocate it. Democrats last week passed a $2.2 trillion bill, down from a $3.5 trillion bill passed in May, while Mnuchin had last week proposed a $1.6 trillion offer. White House spokeswoman Alyssa Farah said yesterday that Trump was interested in legislation that included checks, as well as assistance for small businesses and airlines, but not a larger package. Later, she said the White House was “open to going with something bigger” but not the $2.2 trillion package Democrats proposed. Trump had faced pushback from Republicans who said it was a mistake to abandon efforts to mitigate the health and economic blows of the pandemic, especially on the eve of an election where control of both the White House and Senate are at stake. Pelosi, too, has been under pressure from Democratic lawmakers to remain at the negotiating table, amid signs the labor market recovery is stalling.

Houston-based Eagle Pipe LLC filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 5 after a subsidiary of Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. canceled its pending orders from the company, the Houston Business Journal reported. Exxon upstream subsidiary XTO Energy Inc. represented about half of Eagle Pipe’s revenue stream when it terminated its business relationship with Eagle Pipe at the end of June, Eagle Pipe President Jared Light said in a declaration to the bankruptcy court. As social distancing cut into demand for manufacturing and transportation fuels, upstream oil and gas companies started pulling back on spending plans, causing a decline in drilling activity. That cut into demand for oil country tubular goods, which Eagle Pipe supplies to its customers. It was in this environment that XTO cancelled all its pending orders from Eagle Pipe, including one that was set to generate $225 million in revenue for the company, Light said. Eagle Pipe petitioned the Southern District of Texas Bankruptcy Court for chapter 11 protection on Oct. 5. At the time, the company owed about $20.7 million to creditors. Two of its suppliers are also claiming interest in about $11 million in Eagle Pipe’s inventory.

An oil well site in the Permian Basin owned by a bankrupt shale producer has spewed polluting gases into the atmosphere for 10 months, despite being investigated by Texas regulators, according to an environmental group, Bloomberg News reported. Infrared video footage collected during multiple visits from November 2019 through September show “continuous intense and significant” emissions from faulty valves and tank hatches at MDC Energy LLC’s Pick Pocket location in West Texas, Earthworks said in a letter to two state regulatory agencies on Thursday. The group called on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Railroad Commission to rescind permits for MDC. It’s the latest example of mounting environmental concerns in the Permian Basin, where the extent of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is largely unknown. Those concerns are being compounded by a collapse in crude prices that’s forced many producers into bankruptcy, sparking worries that they won’t be able to pay to maintain producing wells or properly plug ones that are abandoned. Methane emissions attract particular scrutiny because it’s a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. 

International arrivals to New York are down as much as 93 percent, and the people and businesses of the city’s tourism industry are on the brink of collapse, the New York Times reported. The pandemic and the global travel restrictions introduced in March to slow the spread of the coronavirus have decimated the American tourism industry, taking with it the livelihoods of millions of people. The U.S. Travel Association, a trade group that promotes travel to and within the country, projects that the U.S. will see the number of international visitors plummet nearly 80 percent this year, to only 18.6 million, compared to 79 million arrivals last year. While that slump has been devastating for popular tourist destinations like Orlando and Los Angeles, nowhere in the U.S. is the impact more visible than in New York City, which drew more than 13.5 million international visitors last year. New York City has been for years the most popular big-city destination in the U.S. Now citizens from countries across the world — including Britain, China and Brazil, the three most important markets for tourists visiting New York — are banned from entering the country.

U.S. government-supported passenger railroad Amtrak said yesterday that without a new government bailout it could be forced to cut more spending and train services, which could lead to the loss of another 2,400 jobs, Reuters reported. Amtrak last month told Congress it needs up to $4.9 billion in government funding for the current budget year, up from the around $2 billion in annual support it usually receives. The railroad, which said last month it was cutting 2,000 jobs, said on Thursday that without more support from Congress, reduced capital spending would result in the loss of 775 jobs, and further reductions in train service by state partners would likely result in 1,625 job losses. Without the new funding, Amtrak chief executive Bill Flynn said, “We will be unable to avoid more drastic impacts that could have long lasting effects on our Northeast Corridor infrastructure and the national rail system.” 

Wall Street firms expect the Federal Reserve to start paring back its bond-buying next year, and phase it out completely by the second half of 2023, the New York Fed’s latest survey of primary dealers shows, Reuters reported. The Fed has since June said it will buy “at least” $120 billion a month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities “over coming months,” but has not given any precise guidance on its asset-purchase plans. It has bought about $3 trillion since the start of the crisis to help stabilize financial markets and boost the economy. The survey, whose results were shared internally at the central bank ahead of its September policy meeting and released publicly on Thursday, shows that banks expect the Fed to begin trimming MBS purchases in the first half of 2021, and by the second half to have pared total purchases to $84 billion a month, on average. The Fed is expected to taper purchases further in 2022, to a monthly average of about $25 billion by the second half, according to the survey. Those expectations contrast with investor speculation that the Fed may need to boost bond-buying at some point to help the recovery along. They also seem at odds with the Fed’s own guidance on keeping monetary policy super easy for years to come. Last month the Fed said it will not raise interest rates until the economy is at full employment and inflation has reached and looks set to exceed 2 percent, a process policymakers signaled they think will take until at least 2023.

The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said yesterday that the agency has brought 700 enforcement actions in the 2020 fiscal year, a ‘significant’ amount after March 15, Reuters reported. In a virtual address kicking off “SEC Speaks 2020,” an annual SEC enforcement conference put on in conjunction with the Practicing Law Institute, Jay Clayton said the agency had also obtained financial remedies of more than $4 billion, up from a year prior. The SEC has also reviewed disclosures of more than 10,700 funds -- including more than 1,200 new funds -- in 2020, an increase of 7 percent over last year, Clayton added.