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The creditors of a bankrupt Hess Corp. subsidiary have asked a U.S. judge to dismiss the company's bankruptcy case, saying it serves no purpose other than to protect Hess from lawsuits related to asbestos exposure at a Virgin Islands oil refinery, Reuters reported. The creditors allege that Hess, a $37 billion energy company, is abusing U.S. bankruptcy laws to dodge 900 claims stemming from asbestos contamination at a St. Croix refinery that it operated for decades, according to a motion filed Thursday in Houston bankruptcy court. Asbestos at the refinery caused lung disease and cancer, including mesothelioma, according to the official creditors committee in the bankruptcy case. Hess subsidiary HONX filed for chapter 11 protection in Houston on April 29, saying it intended to take advantage of the “breathing spell” of a bankruptcy case to reach a fair and efficient resolution of asbestos claims against Hess. In Thursday’s filing, the creditors committee said HONX has no need for a "breathing spell" because it is a mere "husk of a company" that has been re-animated as a shield against lawsuits. HONX's predecessor company ran the St. Croix refinery from 1965 to 1998, and the refinery has since been sold to new owners not affiliated with Hess.

PT Garuda Indonesia on Friday filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of New York court, as the debt-laden carrier tries to secure its future profitability, Bloomberg News reported. The submission comes as the airline, having completed a court-supervised debt restructuring in Indonesia to halve reduce its debt load, tries to capitalize on the rebound in international travel. Garuda’s total debt now amounts to roughly $5.1 billion, President Director Irfan Setiaputra told parliament in Jakarta on Monday. Reviving the national airline is a top priority for the Indonesian government, because the country relies on air transport for connectivity and to support its tourism industry. The airline could post net income of around $400 million next year and gradually increases its earnings to $647 million in 2026, according to a projection by Indonesia’s finance ministry this month.

Some of the Revlon Inc. creditors who were accidentally sent more than $900 million by Citigroup Inc. asked a federal appeals court for a rehearing, after it ruled that they had to give the money back, Bloomberg News reported. The lenders — which include Brigade Capital Management LP, HPS Investment Partners LLC and Symphony Asset Management — asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Thursday to have a larger group of judges review the decision by a three-judge panel this month. That decision reversed a lower-court ruling that they could keep $504 million the bank mistakenly wired them in 2020. Some of the lenders had given the money back. The panel’s decision, in a case that became the talk of Wall Street, was a redemptive win for Citigroup’s main banking unit in its efforts to redress the embarrassing blunder, which forced the bank to explain to regulators how such a failure was possible. The legal dispute turns on the “discharge for value” defense, established by a 1991 New York court ruling that creditors can keep money sent to them in error if they didn’t realize the payment was a mistake. The lenders said the appellate panel’s decision “unsettled previously established New York law, such that parties in financial transactions can only wonder whether the New York state courts will adopt this court’s newly crafted exceptions to the discharge-for-value rule.”

Andy Jenks, a sixth-generation Illinois farmer, owns shares in a small real-estate investment trust called Farmland Partners Inc. but rarely thought about them. That changed on July 11, 2018. That morning, a writer going by the name Rota Fortunae published an article on an investing website, Seeking Alpha, alleging Farmland was at risk of insolvency, the Wall Street Journal reported. Some investors had shorted the company, betting Farmland’s stock was poised to decline. It did, and by the end of the day, Farmland was down 39%. It took more than two years for the share price to recover. Denver-based Farmland sued Rota Fortunae in Colorado federal court. The company accused the writer, whose real name is Quinton Mathews, of posting a “false and misleading” article to drive down the company’s shares. Farmland also sued a Dallas hedge fund, Sabrepoint Capital Management, in Colorado federal court and Texas state court, accusing it of working with Mathews for the same purpose. Mathews later said key parts of his article were incorrect, a statement he issued to settle Farmland’s lawsuit. Sabrepoint disputed Farmland’s allegations, saying it didn’t instruct Mr. Mathews to write his report and didn’t pay him to do it. Judges in both states dismissed Farmland’s lawsuits against the hedge fund, though Farmland is appealing in Texas.

A court-appointed mediation team overseeing negotiations between Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy power utility and its creditors wants a new debt restructuring proposal filed within 60 days and a confirmation hearing to be held no later than June, Bloomberg News reported. The mediation team is seeking a new round of debt talks after the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority and its creditors and a Congressionally appointed financial oversight board last week failed to reach a deal on how to restructure $9 billion of debt. Establishing the deadlines will help the parties negotiate, the mediation team wrote in a court filing Thursday. Prepa, as the utility is known, has been in bankruptcy, also called Title III, since 2017. “The mediation team believes that focusing the mediation parties on a schedule for Prepa’s actual emergence as promptly as practicable from this Title III case provides a critically important context to the mediation,” the team wrote in Thursday’s filing. There had been optimism that Prepa’s bankruptcy would end this year after the commonwealth itself effectively finished its own workout in March. But Governor Pedro Pierluisi terminated Prepa’s prior debt agreement that month and the parties have been unable to strike a new deal since then. The mediation panel wants the court to order the oversight board to hire an additional financial adviser “with extensive experience in financial restructuring,” according to the filing. Citigroup Global Markets Inc. has been serving as the board’s strategic adviser and investment banker in Prepa’s restructuring.

Shareholders in cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network Ltd. filed a motion to set up a committee to ensure they are adequately represented in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, Bloomberg News reported. Series B preferred shareholders “urgently require their own fiduciary,” according to the filing yesterday by lawyers for a group of equity owners. Celsius filed for bankruptcy in July, a high profile casualty of this year’s meltdown in digital assets that also brought down the likes of crypto platform Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. Currently, a committee of unsecured creditors is “laser focused on maximizing value for the customers” but “there is no stakeholder presently at the table advocating for the interests of the equity holders,” the filing said. It added that appointing a committee will ensure equity holders are on equal footing with other major stakeholders, “particularly where the debtors have abandoned any pretext of acting in the interests of the equity holders.” The hearing on the matter is scheduled for Oct. 6. Earlier this month, Celsius Network in an update on Twitter said that it expects to soon begin its claims process and hopes to advance talks on withdrawals at its Oct. 7 hearing.

Compute North, one of the largest operators of crypto-mining data centers, filed for bankruptcy and revealed that its CEO stepped down as the rout in cryptocurrency prices weighs on the industry, CoinDesk.com reported. The company filed for chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, according to a court filing. Compute North in February announced a capital raise of $385 million, consisting of an $85 million Series C equity round and $300 million in debt financing. But it fell into bankruptcy as miners struggle to survive amid slumping bitcoin (BTC) prices, rising power costs and record difficulty in mining bitcoin. The filing is likely to have negative implications for the industry. Compute North is one of the largest data center providers for miners, and has multiple deals with other larger mining companies. CEO Dave Perrill stepped down earlier this month but will continue to serve on the board, the spokesperson added. Drake Harvey, who has been chief operating officer for the last year, has taken the role of president at Compute North.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones ignited a courtroom shouting match yesterday, railing against critics as he testified in a trial to determine how much he owes families of victims who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, which he falsely claimed was a hoax, Reuters reported. Tensions boiled over after roughly four hours of testimony in the Waterbury, Connecticut courtroom, not far from Newtown, the town where the massacre took place. Jones fulminated against "liberals" and refused to apologize to a packed gallery of victims' families. The defamation trial concerns only how much Jones and the parent company of his Infowars site must pay in damages for spreading lies that the U.S. government staged the killing of 20 children and six staff members as a pretext for seizing guns. The testimony triggered a three-way shouting match between Jones, Mattei and Jones' lawyer, Norman Pattis, who repeatedly objected to Mattei's questioning. After jurors left for the day, Judge Barbara Bellis told the attorneys that she would enforce a "zero tolerance" policy for disruptions and would hold contempt-of-court hearings for anyone who "steps out of line," including Jones.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said yesterday that Infowars' bankrupt parent company will find new chapter 11 advisers after a bankruptcy judge booted professionals from the case over an undisclosed conflict, MarketWatch.com reported. Jones addressed the ruling by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez outside of a Connecticut courthouse where he and Infowars parent company are facing a damages trial for defaming families of Sandy Hook victims. Jones said that Infowars parent Free Speech Systems LLC remains in control of its chapter 11 case and will work closely with a so-called Subchapter V trustee to find new advisers. Judge Lopez also ordered the Subchapter V trustee to review FSS' finances and transactions Sandy Hook families have raised concerns about. "Free Speech will actively and quickly retain replacement professionals, this time with the guidelines of the Subchapter V trustee," Jones said.

A federal bankruptcy judge in Houston ordered new personnel to oversee the bankruptcy of Alex Jones’s Infowars late on Tuesday, citing an ongoing lack of transparency, including over Mr. Jones’s lavish personal spending, the New York Times reported. Judge Christopher Lopez dismissed Mr. Jones’s attorney and chief restructuring officer in the bankruptcy of Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company, and expanded the duties of a Department of Justice-appointed trustee already monitoring the case. The judge authorized the trustee to hire additional legal and other help, specifying that any new hires must have “no connection to any of these cases,” he said, citing a need to investigate “insider relationships.” “There has to be greater transparency in this case,” Judge Lopez said during the hearing on Tuesday, pointing to concerns with spending and other disclosures on the part of the company, which is run by Mr. Jones. “Without transparency, people lose faith in the process,” he added, referring to the federal bankruptcy system. The lawyer and restructuring officer were together attempting to reorganize the company as part of the bankruptcy. In dismissing them, the judge did not fault their work, but rather cited a “lack of candor” on the part of the company, whose moves are dictated by Jones.