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Revlon Inc. has failed to complete a distressed-bond exchange that would have extended a debt maturity and given the troubled cosmetics company more time to get a handle on hundreds of millions in debt due in the coming months, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The New York-based company sought at least 95 percent participation in the exchange offer, which would have extended until 2024 the maturities on bonds scheduled to come due in February. But the deal generated little interest among bondholders owning the 5.75 percent notes, which total about $400 million. Only about 5 percent of the bondholders said they would accept the new securities, the company said yesterday. Unless Revlon can find another solution, the outstanding debt will trigger several other term loan facilities to come due in mid-November. Billionaire Ron Perelman’s investment firm, MacAndrews & Forbes Inc., owns 87 percent of Revlon stock. Perelman has recently moved to reshape the MacAndrews portfolio amid fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Revlon’s financial standing is highly challenged due to the coming maturities. Its bonds trade at deeply distressed levels, including some that changed hands last week at just 14 cents on the dollar.

Business groups are throwing their support behind a pandemic insurance bill modeled after a post-9/11 law that created a federal backstop for claims related to acts of terrorism, The Hill reported. The Pandemic Risk Insurance Act, much like the 2002 Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA), would provide compensation for losses resulting from pandemics or public health emergencies. But unlike TRIA, which had broad bipartisan support and was reauthorized as recently as 2019, the pandemic measure introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has garnered little to no support from Republicans, despite widespread backing from the business community. The legislation has support from the National Retail Federation, International Franchise Association, the U.S. Travel Association and several insurance industry groups. Maloney’s measure, introduced May 26, would create a system of public-private compensation for pandemic-related losses. Unlike the COVID-19 liability shield sought by Senate Republicans, her bill would not be retroactive. Read more.

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Major oil industry producers and traders are forecasting a bleak future for worldwide fuel demand, due to the coronavirus pandemic’s ongoing assault on the global economy, Reuters reported. The novel coronavirus hammered fuel demand in the spring, causing consumption to drop by more than one-third as billions of people worldwide restricted their movements. Consumption rebounded in the summer, but some countries where infections were under control are seeing a resurgence in the deadly virus, sparking waves of lockdowns that could hamper the recovery. “The outlook appears even more fragile ... the path ahead is treacherous amid surging COVID-19 cases in many parts of the world,” the International Energy Agency warned in its monthly report today. The Paris-based energy watchdog revised down its forecast for global oil demand in 2020 by 200,000 barrels per day and noted that a draw on abundant oil stocks in June after three months of builds had faltered in July. On Monday, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut its outlook for demand in 2020 by 400,000 bpd from its previous report, saying world oil demand would fall by 9.46 million bpd this year. A dent in demand caused by a continuing rise in cases or a second wave presents “the most likely shock that the oil market needs to be considering in the next 12 to 24 months,” Vitol’s global head of research, Giovanni Serio said at Platts APPEC 2020.

Hotel owners, who spent years loading up on a cheap type of debt, are now faced with the potential for default as the pandemic saps revenues, the New York Times reported. Billionaire investor Thomas J. Barrack Jr. has run into an unexpected patch of red ink thanks to the pandemic: He has struggled to keep up with payments on $1.97 billion in Wall Street debt he used to buy a collection of more than 160 hotels. Monty Bennett is in a similar tough spot after he recently halted payments owed on the $2.6 billion worth of Wall Street debt used to acquire his own hotel collection. “Imminent monetary default” is the term a Wall Street research firm used this summer to describe more than $300 million in debt on a luxury hotel in Austin, controlled by Doug Manchester. The precarious financial position that some donors to President Trump and other hotel executives are now in has fueled an intense lobbying campaign aimed at persuading the Trump administration, the Federal Reserve and Congress to rescue hundreds of hotel industry players that relied on riskier Wall Street debt to finance their lodging empires before the virus hit. Industry executives and their lobbyists say that a federal rescue will save thousands of jobs and help local economies, and are hoping their argument resonates with a president who is a hotelier himself. They are making the case that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has the power — and access to the billions of federal funds he needs — to extend existing coronavirus relief efforts to the commercial real estate sector, which so far has been cut off from most of the stimulus money. But Congress prevented Mnuchin from tapping the main pot of $454 billion in coronavirus relief funds on his own, and doubts exist in the Treasury Department about the economic case for propping up a relatively small slice of the market that would primarily benefit wealthy investors who knowingly made high-risk bets. One industry lobbyist involved in the negotiations said that department officials remained concerned that some of the borrowers — which include hotels, shopping malls and other commercial real estate — might be “zombies” that are not going to survive, and taxpayer money sent to help them out would be lost.

Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas), the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, introduced legislation on Friday that would create a payroll tax holiday from Sept. 1 through Dec. 31, an effort aimed at forgiving the taxes deferred under a memo President Trump signed last month, The Hill reported. The bill would reduce the 6.2 percent employee-side Social Security tax to zero in the last four months of this year, and would also implement a similar tax cut for self-employed people. To prevent the holiday from hurting the Social Security trust fund, the bill would make transfers to the fund from the general fund. Trump signed a memo that resulted in the IRS issuing guidance late last month under which employers can stop withholding Social Security payroll taxes from workers' paychecks from Sept. 1 through Dec. 31. The employers currently have to recoup the deferred taxes by increasing the amount held from workers' paychecks in the first four months of next year.

Personal and business bankruptcies in the U.S. are declining significantly, but that doesn’t mean that everything is financially sound in households or small businesses in Ohio or the nation, the Toledo Blade reported. “The Tsunami has not yet come. I think some thought it would be here already. The talk now is after the start of the year. If it’s going to come, it will come then,” said bankruptcy attorney Jon Liberman, a partner at the firm of Sottile & Barile, of Cleveland, and the co-chair of ABI’s Consumer Committee. The tidal wave of new bankruptcy filings that Lieberman speaks of, has been on the minds of many in the bankruptcy field due to the current recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic. “Credit card debt is back up there, medical bills are up there, and you have subprime auto loans again. The cost of living has gone up and wages have not, so obviously we’re all sitting back and waiting for the phones to start exploding again,” said bankruptcy attorney Gordon Barry, of the Toledo law firm of Barry & Feit. Since the pandemic began, bankruptcy filings have been trending downward. In August, filings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Toledo, which covers 21 counties in northwest Ohio, totaled just 221 cases — a drop of 42 percent from a year ago and the sixth straight month this year that cases have fallen from 2019. According to ABI, there were 39,349 bankruptcies filed nationwide in August, which was a 41 percent decrease from August, 2019, when 66,530 cases were filed.

Town Sports International Inc, the owner of New York Sports Clubs, filed for chapter 11 protection today after the coronavirus pandemic forced its gyms to close and caused revenue to dry up, Reuters reported. The company’s assets and liabilities were in the range of $500 million to $1 billion, according to a court filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Gym operators have suffered as the pandemic deprived them of the monthly membership and personal training fees that generate much of their revenue. Gold’s Gym International Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection in May, followed by 24 Hour Fitness Worldwide Inc in June. As of March 31, Town Sports operated 185 fitness centers, including 99 New York Sports Clubs, with about 580,000 members. Its brands also include gyms in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. named for those cities, as well as Lucille Roberts and Total Woman Gym and Spa. 

Women’s clothing chain J. Jill Inc. said it has obtained a consent from lenders to extend certain maturities of its term loans, helping the struggling retailer avert a bankruptcy filing, Bloomberg News reported. J. Jill had said previously that it planned to seek chapter 11 protection if it didn’t secure the necessary consents. The company said in a statement that the agreement provides it with additional liquidity and financial flexibility to meet its obligations. The company received permission from lenders holding 97.8 percent of its term loans to proceed with the out-of-court financial restructuring transaction, which extends the maturity of the term-loan debt to May 2024. The transaction is expected to close on or about Sept. 30. J. Jill earlier this month struck a deal with lenders holding 70 percent of the debt to extend certain maturities to 2024, grant a financial covenant holiday and provide for at least $15 million of new cash in the form of a junior term loan. The chain on Friday recorded a narrower loss for its fiscal second quarter, which included an almost 50 percent sales decline. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Quincy, Massachusetts-based company to temporarily close its more than 280 U.S. stores in March. Lenders agreed to hold off on taking immediate action against the company after it violated terms of its loans, J. Jill said in a June news release. 

The U.S. operator of French bakery chain Maison Kayser has filed for bankruptcy with a plan to sell its New York City locations to an affiliate of restaurant operator Aurify Brands LLC, subject to better offers at auction, the Wall Street Journal reported. The operator, Cosmoledo LLC, and its affiliates filed for chapter 11 protection on Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York shortly after notifying the Labor Department that it was laying off more than 700 employees that had been furloughed because of the coronavirus pandemic. Cosmoledo had operated 16 Maison Kayser locations in New York. Aurify’s offer could be valued at as much as $10 million. If the deal goes through, Aurify doesn’t intend to continue operating Maison Kayser but would instead take over the bakery’s former locations to expand its other chains. New York-based Aurify operates restaurant brands including the Little Beet, Melt Shop, Fields Good Chicken as well as Five Guys franchises. The company in May agreed to buy the U.S. division of Belgium-based bakery chain Le Pain Quotidien out of bankruptcy.