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UK-based energy services provider Altera Infrastructure has emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy, a few months after filing for it, Offshore-Energy.biz reported. Thanks to a charter for an FPSO, which is expected to be deployed at one of the largest undeveloped oil fields in the UK, the firm expects to strengthen its balance sheet further, as it sees this as a foundation for long-term growth if this project goes ahead. Back in August 2022, Altera Infrastructure, formerly a part of Teekay, entered a chapter 11 bankruptcy process in the U.S. to address its debt of over $1.5 billion. As explained at the time, the firm executed a restructuring support agreement (the RSA) with approximately 71 per cent of its funded debt obligations, which included an investment management company Brookfield and a super-majority of its bank lenders. Altera Shuttle Tankers and FPSO joint ventures were not part of the restructuring process. In an update on Monday, Altera Infrastructure revealed that it has emerged from the chapter 11 process in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas after consummating its chapter 11 plan of reorganisation. This restructuring, which was consummated approximately five months after the chapter 11 process started, addressed more than $1 billion of secured and unsecured holding company debt, $400 million of preferred equity, and $550 million of secured asset-level bank debt, including unsecured guarantees of such debt issued by the firm.
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Party City Holdco Inc. is preparing to file for bankruptcy within weeks after the party-favor retailer’s cash dwindled and inflation dampened sales, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company has engaged AlixPartners LLP as a restructuring adviser, the people said. Party City is also in discussions with its bondholders to convert debt into equity to trim the balance sheet. Representatives for Party City and AlixPartners didn’t immediately respond to requests seeking comment. The company is also planning to close some stores. Party City has been suffering from widening net losses, and its recent Halloween sales came in at the low end of expectations in part because inflationary pressures have hampered customers’ willingness to spend, the company said last month. Party City also has engaged law firm Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP as restructuring counsel. Bondholders have been working with law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP as well as financial adviser Lazard Ltd.

FTX’s new management and liquidators in the Bahamas have signed an agreement to cooperate and collect assets on behalf of creditors, capping off a prolonged row between the two parties over who controls the bankrupt exchange’s remaining property, the Wall Street Journal reported. The parties have agreed to share information, as well as help to secure and distribute assets that belong to FTX entities in the Bahamas and abroad, according to a Friday press release. FTX had been headquartered in the Bahamas since 2021 and its international exchange was overseen by Bahamian regulators. “There are some issues where we do not yet have a meeting of the minds, but we resolved many of the outstanding matters and have a path forward to resolve the rest,” said John J. Ray III, FTX’s new chief executive, in a statement. Plans to cooperate may resolve a prolonged battle between government officials in the Bahamas and FTX’s new U.S.-based management, who have publicly traded barbs and accused the other of misconduct for almost two months. As FTX suffered from billions in customer withdrawals and teetered toward bankruptcy, Bahamian regulators ruled that a local unit housing the international exchange was insolvent and appointed liquidators to collect billions of its assets. One day later, Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as FTX’s chief executive and passed control of FTX to Mr. Ray, who filed more than 130 FTX subsidiaries for chapter 11 protection.

The U.S. government has launched a website for victims of FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried's alleged fraud to communicate with law enforcement, Reuters reported. In an order late Friday night, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan authorized federal prosecutors to use the website, and not have to contact victims individually. FTX could owe money to more than 1 million people, making it "impracticable" to contact each, prosecutors had said. Federal law requires prosecutors to contact possible crime victims to inform them of their rights, including the rights to obtain restitution, be heard in court and be protected from defendants. "If you believe that you may have been a victim of fraud by Samuel Bankman-Fried, A/K/A/ 'SBF,' please contact the victim/witness coordinator at the United States Attorney's office," the website read. The website had gone live by Friday afternoon. Bankman-Fried, 30, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of wire fraud and conspiracy over November's collapse of FTX. Prosecutors have said he stole billions in FTX customer deposits to pay debts for his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and lied to investors about FTX's financial condition.

U.S. state officials have raised objections to Binance.US’s deal to acquire user accounts from bankrupt New York-based crypto firm Voyager Digital Ltd., saying that the buyer’s opaque finances, foreign ownership and business practices put U.S. customers at risk, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Texas financial regulators pointed to a lack of clarity on the buyer’s ties to foreign affiliates and related parties, as well as the personal finances of Binance owner Changpeng Zhao, and said they can’t protect consumers who do business with foreign entities. A bankruptcy court will consider the state officials’ views in weighing a proposed deal for Binance.US to buy Voyager’s customer accounts out of chapter 11. Binance.US stepped in as the winning bidder for Voyager’s accounts after an earlier agreement to migrate them to FTX fell through. Since the collapse of FTX, Binance’s own finances have drawn increasing scrutiny, yet the exchange has offered little in the way of transparency. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also objected to the deal, saying the parties haven’t provided enough information on Binance.US’s ability to complete a deal as large as the Voyager purchase or enough information on how they plan to protect customers’ assets against theft or loss. Separately, the U.S. government has said in court papers that a national-security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. could affect Voyager’s ability to complete a transaction, the timing of such a deal, or its terms.

Cryptocurrency companies are disclosing more information about their internal controls and risk management following the collapse of FTX, but a level of transparency in the industry that would make many investors feel comfortable remains far off, the Wall Street Journal reported. Without a federal regulatory regime for the nascent crypto industry in the U.S., risk-management measures vary by firm and it remains difficult for outside observers — including investors and customers — to determine how effective these controls are until things go bad, industry experts say. When a crypto firm is privately held and isn’t subject to the disclosure requirements public companies face, such as third-party auditing, just learning what controls are in place can be a tall order. Although most crypto firms aren’t subject to formal federal regulation, many have adopted the enterprise-risk-management programs that U.S. watchdogs require of mainstream financial institutions in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. These rules ask companies to identify, monitor and control their risks in both their financials and operations through scenario planning and testing and framework implementation. Among the risks being monitored are cybersecurity risks; legal and compliance risks, such as those arising from financial crimes and sanctions; credit risks that arise when funds are used as collateral; and liquidity risks.

The health impact in Scott County with a population of 25,000 was catastrophic: 88% of the patients infected with HIV injected Opana ER or a generic with oxymorphone — a highly profitable opioid with a trail of misery formed over decades by the Malvern, Pa., drug firm Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc. Opana ER, the most sought Endo pill, was the “cornerstone” of the company’s pain-management business, the government says, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. In 2017, two years after the Indiana crisis, the Food and Drug Administration requested that Endo remove the crush-resistant Opana ER pills from the market as drug users were shifting from snorting to injecting oxymorphone. Thousands of government and private organizations have sued Endo for its alleged part in the nation’s opioid epidemic, which government experts say has claimed more than 500,000 lives in America. Michael Carrier, a Rutgers Law professor who has studied pharmaceutical antitrust behavior for 15 years. But oxymorphone is still a big money-maker for Endo, whose patent for the drug makes it the medication’s “gatekeeper,” the government says. The FDA didn’t ban oxymorphone in 2017, and generic pills based on Endo’s original Opana ER formulation are still available for doctors to prescribe for cancer, lower back and other pain. Endo estimated in 2017 that a royalty stream from the oxymorphone ER generic pills over time was worth “close to $265 million” — non-crush-resistant pills that Endo once told the FDA should be taken off the market for safety. Endo controls a critical patent on the generic pills through 2029. Because of patents, Endo earns a percentage of the “monopoly” profits on the generic pills distributed by Impax Laboratories LLC, a 2021 Federal Trade Commission lawsuit says. The FTC, which enforces consumer protection laws, is asking the federal court to find that the agreement between Endo and Impax violates antitrust laws and seeks unspecified monetary damages.

3M Co. has racked up more than $450 million in defense costs as it struggles to fend off allegations defective earplugs it sold to the U.S. military harmed soldiers’ hearing, court filings show, Bloomberg News reported. The company — which has lost a slew of test trials over the earplugs — put a unit into chapter 11 in July in hopes of corralling the estimated $7 billion litigation over the product. A bankruptcy court filing last month detailed how 3M’s lawyers are seeking more than $19 million in fees and costs for work on the case just between July and October, bringing the running total to $366 million. The company also projected in July it would spend another $100 million on lawyers and legal costs defending the earplug cases over the rest of 2022, bringing its potential total bill to about $466 million, according to court filings. The fee tally is just the latest twist in the more than four-year litigation over 3M’s earplugs. More than a dozen juries concluded veterans’ hearing loss was tied to the defective products and ordered their maker to pay more than $300 million in damages. 3M also has won six defense verdicts in so-called test trials. A bankruptcy judge ruled the company couldn’t use its bankruptcy filing to stop the earplug trials. More than 200,000 veterans claim they were injured by the faulty earplugs. 3M put its Aearo subsidiary into chapter 11 in Indianapolis in hopes of facilitating quicker and cheaper settlements of the earplug suits. Other companies facing mass-tort litigation — including Johnston & Johnson and Purdue Pharma LP — are relying on similar bankruptcy filings to deal with their litigation woes in that forum rather than through state- and federal-court trials and settlements. But the judge overseeing a consolidation of the earplug cases in Florida last month ruled 3M can’t shift financial responsibility for the damage awards and other liabilities to its Aearo unit in bankruptcy. 3M has set up mediation efforts in both the Florida case and the Indiana bankruptcy action in hopes of coming up with out-of-court settlements.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is preparing to file for bankruptcy within weeks after the home-goods retailer came up short on sales during the critical holiday season, the Wall Street Journal reported. The retailer is in the early stages of planning for a chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and the discussions could extend into February, these people said. Bed Bath & Beyond warned earlier Thursday that it might file for bankruptcy protection and that it has substantial doubt it can stay in business after enduring another quarter of deep losses and slumping sales. Bed Bath & Beyond stock closed down 30% on Thursday at its lowest level in decades after the company said it was running low on funds and considering several options, including seeking relief in bankruptcy court. It said that sales for its third quarter, which ended in November, are expected to fall by nearly a third and that losses are expected to widen nearly 40% to $385.8 million.

Early last year, cryptocurrency exchange FTX US was setting its sights on a vast pool of money: individual retirement accounts (IRAs), Bloomberg News reported. “We have IRAs trading on FTX today, and are making a push to serve this segment,” Nate Clancy, FTX US’s vice president of business development, wrote in a March email to a New Jersey-based investment adviser, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News. Americans held more than $11 trillion in IRAs as of last year. The outreach, part of a multifaceted effort by the wider FTX Group to expand its base of everyday retail customers, casts light on the exchange’s sprawling ambitions in the months leading up to its implosion — and gives a glimpse into how the damage might have been even worse had the plans had longer to gestate. FTX and former Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried’s broader crypto empire collapsed in November. U.S. authorities allege he fraudulently used customer money to prop up his trading firm Alameda Research, leaving legions of clients high and dry when FTX went bankrupt. The charges center on the group’s global trading platform FTX.com, but FTX US, its smaller unit for US investors, was part of the bankruptcy.