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Sandy Hook victims’ families asked a court to remove Alex Jones and his bankrupt company that runs conspiracy website Infowars from controlling its operations and chapter 11 proceedings, arguing that the right-wing radio host improperly seized millions of dollars in assets, Bloomberg Law reported. “There are no honest debtors here,” the victims’ families said in a filing Thursday at the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. “Since the Sandy Hook Families filed their lawsuits, the Debtor has systematically transferred millions of dollars to Alex Jones and his relatives and insider entities.” Free Speech Systems LLC, the Jones-controlled company that operates Infowars, should be removed as “debtor in possession” of its bankruptcy case, the families said. That would leave an independent trustee in charge of the case filed under the small business section of chapter 11, known as subchapter V. Free Speech Systems filed for bankruptcy in July, after some victims’ families won judgments in their defamation lawsuits against the company and Jones for his lies that the 2012 school shooting was a hoax. In one recent case, a jury awarded parents of a child killed in the shooting nearly $50 million in damages. Jones himself took between $18 million and $62 million from Free Speech since the families filed suit—even though the company was allegedly insolvent—according to the Thursday filing.

An Apollo Global Management LLC-owned lighting components firm said it has agreed on a restructuring plan to help reduce debt by $1.3 billion, as it grapples with supply chain constraints exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg New reported. Lumileds Holding B.V., which supplies energy-efficient LED lighting for automotive displays, said in a statement it had entered into the agreement with key lenders, and that it had commenced Chapter 11 proceedings limited to its US and Netherlands operations. It said it expected to emerge from proceedings within 60 days. The Dutch-headquartered company’s European, Asian, and other foreign subsidiaries and affiliates are not included in the filing and are unaffected by the chapter 11 process, according to the statement. It said it expected employees to continue receiving wages and benefits. “We have proactively taken steps to de-leverage our balance sheet given the ongoing challenges presented by global supply constraints, COVID-related issues, and the crisis in Ukraine,” said Matt Roney, CEO of Lumileds. Under the terms of the restructuring agreement, the existing secured lenders are expected to commit to support, and vote in favor of, a deal that will reduce the company’s funded debt to about $400 million from around $1.7 billion, according to the statement. This would include takeback debt and post-petition loans, which would be combined into a five-year exit facility. The deal would include as much as $275 million of debtor-in-possession financing, according to the statement.

Creditors filed a lawsuit against Mexican multimedia conglomerate TV Azteca S.A.B. de C.V., controlled by business mogul Ricardo Salinas Pliego, after the company skipped out on payments to U.S. based investors for over a year while continuing to pay other debts in Mexico, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A trustee representing TV Azteca’s largest U.S.-based creditors, including Fidelity Investments Inc., Contrarian Capital Management LLC and Cyrus Capital Partners LP, asked for roughly $480 million in owed payments and additional damages after negotiations over a payment plan for the company’s foreign debts fell through. The trustee said in its complaint that it had demanded full repayment from the company earlier this year after it missed three interest payments, but TV Azteca hasn’t responded to its requests. In a statement, TV Azteca said that it has maintained dialogue with bondholders and “will continue to do our best to pursue a dialogue that allows all parties to reach a favorable agreement.” “Over the last years, we have carried out a disciplined and healthy financial strategy, thanks to which we have strengthened our capital structure and remained competitive in such complex and challenging times,” the company added. The case was filed in New York state court, which creditors say is the appropriate jurisdiction since their dollar-denominated debts are governed by New York law. Earlier this month, lenders to the multimedia company demanded full payment under a $400 million dollar-denominated bond following more than a year’s worth of missed payments. Fitch Ratings said the company had defaulted on its debt obligations in the spring of 2021, when it first stopped making payments on its foreign debts while continuing to pay local creditors.

Sandy Hook victims’ families asked a federal bankruptcy court on Thursday to order the Infowars conspiracy broadcaster Alex Jones to relinquish control over his company, saying he has “systematically transferred millions of dollars” to himself and his relatives while claiming to be broke, the New York Times reported. In a filing in the bankruptcy court in Houston, the families of nine Sandy Hook victims said they sought to have a bankruptcy trustee who is already monitoring the case take control of Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Mr. Jones’s misinformation-peddling media outlet. The families are also seeking a court-appointed oversight committee to restrict Jones’s ability to control Infowars’s finances. Jones’s claimed insolvency is at the heart of his efforts to avoid paying for the damage done by his Sandy Hook lies. Earlier this month, a Texas jury ordered him to pay the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting nearly $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages for spreading the falsehood that they helped stage the massacre. “Alex Jones is not financially bankrupt; he is morally bankrupt, which is becoming more and more clear as we discover his plots to hide money and evade responsibility,” said Kyle Farrar, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families. “He used lies to amass a fortune, and now he is using lies and fictions to shield his money.” The families said in their filing that Mr. Jones had siphoned nearly $62 million from his business into financial vehicles benefiting himself and his family beginning in 2018, when the Sandy Hook families first filed suit. At the core of his bankruptcy claim is Jones’s assertion that Free Speech Systems owes $54 million to PQPR Holdings, a company owned and operated directly and indirectly by Jones and his parents. The debt is fictional, the families’ lawyers said in Thursday’s filing, and “a centerpiece of Jones’s plan to avoid compensating the Sandy Hook families.”

SAS AB, which is working its way through a chapter 11 restructuring in the U.S., warned that much more needs to be done to persuade stakeholders to invest in the ailing Scandinavian airline, Bloomberg News reported. The airline is also having to overcome the effects of a pilots’ strike and travel disruptions that have hampered its important summer season, just as the price of kerosene has skyrocketed and inflation is accelerating. “Cost cutting across all SAS remains a focus to ensure our cost competitiveness,” the Stockholm-based airline said in a statement on Friday as it announced third-quarter results. It has identified “the vast majority” of the 7.5 billion kroner ($707 million) in annual spending it needs to cut. It reported total operating expenses of 24.4 billion kroner for the nine months to July, up 10.8 billion kronor after adjusting for currency effects. The tri-national airline made significant progress on both its staffing crisis and financial restructuring plans over the summer. Earlier this month, Apollo Global Management Inc. agreed to provide the company with a loan known as Treasury Financing of approximately $700 million to help it through its chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. In addition to the loan deal with Apollo, SAS is nearing the results in talks to renegotiate contracts to reduce leasing costs and “right size” the fleet, CEO Anko van der Werff said in an interview. “We are making progress on our ongoing talks,” he said. “I think they’ll last a few more months.” In August, the company’s pilots also agreed to a collective bargaining agreement the airline and unions struck last month to end a 15-day strike. The July strike hit SAS at its busiest time of the year, when it was forced to cancel 3,700 flights, affecting 380,000 passengers and costing $135 million.

Days before the money-losing opioid drug firm Endo International filed for bankruptcy last week, the company paid chief executive Blaise Coleman an $11.85 million bonus, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. It was, in fact, the latest installment of an eye-popping $55.5 million in pre-bankruptcy bonuses paid over 10 months to Coleman and three other top executives at the drug firm, which faces potentially huge legal liability for its part in the nation’s opioid epidemic. Endo manufactured and marketed hundreds of millions of branded Opana and generic opioid pain pills. Endo paid the first bonuses last November when it considered an earlier bankruptcy date. The firm drug paid a second round of bonuses right before the actual bankruptcy filing in Manhattan on Aug. 16, court and regulatory records show. Endo describes them as prepaid incentives and management retention. Pre-bankruptcy bonuses reward executives for failing enterprises, critics say. They aren’t scrutinized by the bankruptcy court or creditors, and they siphon money out of the funds available for the business, or settling debts.

Bankruptcy Judge David Jones declined to appoint an equity committee in Revlon Inc.'s bankruptcy, rejecting a minority shareholder demand for a greater say in the cosmetics company's restructuring, Reuters reported. Judge Jones said that shareholder interests were already represented in the bankruptcy by Revlon, majority shareholder MacAndrews & Forbes, and the minority shareholder group led by investment advisor Mittleman Brothers LLC, which is free to continue advocating for shareholders on an unofficial basis. Equity committees are only rarely appointed in bankruptcy cases, and Judge Jones ruled that the cost of appointing a committee outweighed its likely value. If an official equity committee were appointed, Revlon would have to pay its attorneys and professionals at a time when its resources are already stretched, Judge Jones said. The minority shareholders' attorney, Gregory Pesce, argued yesterday that an equity committee was the best way to give a voice to the "little guys," retail stockholders who had invested in Revlon's future. The minority shareholders group pointed to increases in Revlon's share price after the company filed for chapter 11, saying Revlon was more than a so-called meme stock fueled by irrational retail investors and social media buzz. Revlon had opposed the appointment of an equity committee, and its attorney Kyle Kimpler said the company's shareholders "cannot possibly" prove that they are entitled to a meaningful payout at this stage in the bankruptcy. The company must pay $3.5 billion in debt before shareholders are entitled to a recovery, Kimpler said. Revlon's lenders also opposed the minority shareholder request, saying that recent stock price fluctuations were "untethered from market realities."

Voyager Digital Ltd. won a bankruptcy judge’s permission to pay $1.6 million in bonuses to employees deemed critical to the insolvent crypto lender’s future, Bloomberg News reported. The payouts will go to 34 Voyager employees — none of whom are top executives — who work in areas like accounting and IT infrastructure, according to court papers. The bonuses are equal to 22.5% of each employee’s annual salary. Voyager’s official creditor committee had earlier attacked the bonus plan as unnecessary, but dropped its objection after the crypto lender agreed to take steps including slashing the size of the bonus pool and to quickly cut $4.6 million of annual costs elsewhere. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Wiles in a hearing yesterday said that he would approve the bonuses. Preventing key employees from quitting will help Voyager maximize the value of its business and, in turn, maximize creditor recoveries, he said. Voyager customers with crypto stuck on the platform still haven’t recovered any of their holdings. Those who stored cash with the company have so far fared better: about $219 million, or 80%, of customer cash trapped in the platform since the start of the bankruptcy has since been returned, a lawyer for Voyager said in the hearing.

Cineworld Group Plc equity holders are set to be left with nothing, a short seller warned after the cinema operator said this week that it was considering filing for U.S. bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Argonaut Capital Partners LLP’s Barry Norris told Bloomberg Television that Cineworld’s pursuit of acquisitions that were funded by debt had left it with a “completely unsustainable” capital structure. A spokesman for Cineworld declined to comment on Argonaut’s position or interview but requested that Bloomberg highlight the firm’s Aug. 22 statement, in which it said it would “maintain its operations in the ordinary course until and following any filing and ultimately to continue its business over the longer term with no significant impact upon its employees.” The cinema chain racked up large debts from acquisitions, and has suffered from a weak box-office recovery following COVID-19 lockdowns that kept customers away from theaters. Following its 2018 acquisition of US chain Regal, Cineworld carries $4.84 billion in net debt, according to its latest annual report. It also faces nearly $1 billion in damages to Canada’s Cineplex Inc. over an aborted takeover bid.