%1

Almost three years after the brand filed for chapter 11 protection, Eminent Cycles' remaining frames, bikes and parts are being auctioned this month, BicycleRetailer.com reported. Eminent's initial chapter 11 filing showed debts of $1.4 million and assets of $139,000. At the time the company said it planned to continue operating and servicing customers during a reorganization. Fischer Auction Co. Inc. is listing about 400 lots available in an online auction starting Jan. 17. The lots include individual bikes, frames and crates containing multiple Fox suspension parts. An auction preview will be held Jan. 16 at the Eminent headquarters in San Marcos. In a December 2023 filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Southern California, Eminent Cycles owner Jeff Soncrant said that since the bankruptcy initial filing he has invested more than $300,000 in the company and worked without salary for two and a half years. He said Eminent sales grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic but then the company was unable to obtain additional inventory for several months due to supply chain challenges. Later, Eminent was challenged by tariffs on China-made frames and high shipping costs that resulted in higher pricing. He said factories also prioritized orders from larger brands during this period. "However, because there were back orders from customers, it provided Eminent confidence that business growth would increase," he said of the 2022 scenario. When inventory began arriving in June 2022, more than half of customers canceled their orders, he said in the filing. By early 2023, he said, "there was no demand for bikes."

A Johns Creek software company has filed for bankruptcy protection as it fends off up to a billion dollars in debt, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Ebix, which has a history of allegations regarding its financial reporting, filed under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The filing, Dec. 17 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Texas, put the debt at between $500 million and $1 billion. The company, which has a worldwide business providing software behind many transactions in insurance, financial services, travel and healthcare, did not respond Thursday to phone calls or emails requesting comment. But it said in its bankruptcy filing that it intends to make up much of the gap between what it owes and what it can pay by selling its North American assets in life and annuities. Those assets would be sold to Zinnia Distributor Solutions for $400 million, according to a filing by Ebix with the U.S. Security Securities and Exchange Commission. Those assets account for 14.5% of Ebix annual revenue, the company said.

Some former customers of the bankrupt crypto firm FTX Trading Ltd. are pushing a U.S. judge to change how they will be repaid, arguing that proposed rules unfairly leave them out of a yearlong rise in the price of Bitcoin and other digital currencies, Bloomberg News reported. More than 80 individual customers have filed letters attacking a plan to peg the value of their digital assets to the date FTX filed bankruptcy — Nov. 11, 2022 — and pay claims in U.S. dollars instead of returning the crypto coins. The customers had some form of crypto trapped on the FTX platform when company founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down amid fraud allegations. Nearly a year later, he was convicted of orchestrating a massive fraud that led to the collapse of his FTX exchange. Since the collapse, a team of bankruptcy experts, lead by chief restructuring officer John J. Ray III, has been trying to recover as much cash and as many crypto assets as possible. The team won court approval to sell crypto held on the platform in order to create a pool of billions of dollars that can be returned to customers. The size of each customer’s claim will be based on the price of the crypto coin they held on the FTX platform when the company filed its chapter 11 petition in Wilmington, Delaware. For Bitcoin holders, that means they will be owed $16,871 for each of their former coins, according to court records. The current price surged past $49,000 at one point on Thursday after trading began on the first U.S. exchange-traded funds that invest directly in the biggest cryptocurrency.

Careismatic Brands has engaged restructuring advisers to address financial challenges, according to people familiar with the matter, as competitive pressure and deteriorating performance make it difficult for the medical apparel company to satisfy its debt obligations, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Careismatic, owned by private-equity firm Partners Group, has engaged financial adviser PJT Partners and legal counsel Kirkland & Ellis to explore options for its debt load, the people said. Partners Group acquired the company in 2021. At the time, it raised more than $800 million in loans to fund the acquisition. Careismatic, founded in 1995, bills itself as the world’s largest retailer of medical apparel, including products like hospital uniforms, scrubs and footwear. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company has faced competition from Figs, an apparel retailer that entered the market in 2013. Moody’s downgraded Careismatic in October, citing deterioration in its operating performance, cash flow and credit metrics. The company’s sales have deteriorated due to intense competition and softening demand after the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the report.

Troika Media Group is suing a former co-owner of a business it acquired in 2022, asking a bankruptcy court to halt his lawsuit against a lender key to Troika’s restructuring, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The advertising-services provider, which filed for bankruptcy in December, on Wednesday sued Thomas Marianacci, co-owner of Converge Direct, a company Troika bought for $125 million. The lawsuit asks the Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York to suspend the state-court lawsuit filed by Marianacci against lender Blue Torch Finance seeking $29 million, a suit Troika says would impede its restructuring. Troika acquired Converge Direct partly through $75 million in loans provided by Blue Torch, $29 million of which went into an escrow account to be released to Marianacci and his co-owners after certain Converge audited financial statements were delivered. The funds, however, haven’t been delivered, as the two sides disagree on whether the conditions to release them have been met. In November — prior to Troika’s bankruptcy filing — Marianacci sued to collect.

A U.S. bankruptcy court judge this week dismissed the personal bankruptcy filing of Boston Market owner Jay Pandya and his wife, Mital, who had sought federal debt protection last month, RestaurantBusinessOnline.com reported. The dismissal came at the request of a U.S. bankruptcy trustee. The trustee said that Pandya had not provided insurance information on two properties he owned. They also said that Pandya had not responded to repeated requests for that information over a two-week period. The dismissal adds to the uncertainty over the future of Boston Market, which has closed as many as 200 locations this year, mostly due to evictions from landlords over unpaid bills. The company has been sued at least 140 times over the past three and a half years, since Pandya acquired the chain from Sun Capital Partners. Most of the lawsuits are over unpaid bills, from employees, landlords and various contractors. The biggest lawsuit is from US Foods, which has accused Boston Market of refusing to pay bills for food distribution. The distributor is asking a judge to award it nearly $12 million in that case. In his bankruptcy filing, Pandya said that he was not the sole owner of any business. But the filing also cited some of his business debts, including a $10 million US Foods liability.

The bankrupt parent company of Silicon Valley Bank plans to turn over its remaining venture capital business to a new, creditor-backed company while it continues to fight U.S. regulators' seizure of nearly $2 billion in cash, according to court documents filed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. SVB Financial Group reached a restructuring agreement with key creditors and has the support of a coalition of banks and investment funds that collectively hold more than $2.3 billion in SVB Financial debt and preferred stock investments, the documents filed in Manhattan bankruptcy court showed. The company filed for bankruptcy in March after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, becoming the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. SVB Financial has used its bankruptcy to sell assets, spinning off its investment banking unit in June, but the restructuring agreement ends its effort to find an outside buyer for the venture capital business. "We believe that retaining SVB Capital under a reorganized company is the best path forward to maximize its value in the current environment," SVB Financial Chief Restructuring Officer William Kosturos said in a statement.

The Annapolis founders of Tessemae’s salad dressing and condiments plan to move on if a pending sale of the company out of bankruptcy goes through this month, but the popular brand is expected to remain on the shelves of dozens of national and regional retailers under new ownership, the Baltimore Sun reported. Tessemae’s filed for chapter 11 reorganization last February to restructure debts and stop what it called costly and distracting litigation by a former lender. Panos Brands, a New Jersey owner of specialty food brands, has agreed to buy Tessemae’s for $4.5 million in a pending deal that requires approval of the U.S Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore. The new owners are expected to continue the full line of dressings and condiments at existing retailers, such as Whole Foods, Walmart, Kroger and Harris Teeter, said Greg Vetter, Tessemae’s CEO.

SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, has struck a deal with key creditors in a step toward resolving its bankruptcy case, Bloomberg News reported. SVB Financial and a crucial bloc of senior bondholders agreed to a deal centered on forming a new company that would hold valuable assets like the firm’s venture capital arm — SVB Capital — and tax attributes potentially worth billions of dollars, according to court papers. The proposal is tentative and still needs court approval. The company explored selling the venture capital unit, but determined it’s likely worth more than what two leading bidders offered, according to court papers filed yesterday. Advisers pegged the present value of the VC business at as much as $572 million, some $55 million higher than their assessment of the best bid, the court papers show. The deal puts Wall Street heavyweights in a position to own stakes in the new entity. The bondholders that negotiated with the company include the likes of Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Pacific Investment Management Co. and King Street Capital Management, according to a July court filing, the group’s most recent disclosure. The restructuring deal calls for other assets, like cash and securities, to be placed in a trust for the benefit of creditors. The restructuring proposal must be worked into a bankruptcy-exit plan on which creditors can vote. Still, the biggest obstacle remaining for creditors is a fight with federal regulators about what should happen with nearly $2 billion in cash SVB Financial had on deposit at its own bank at the time of its failure. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. argued that SVB must go through a formal process controlled by the agency to get the money back. But last week, the agency formally denied the company’s claims for the deposits in a “mere two sentences,” according to court papers. A U.S. district judge decided in December that the question of who legally owns the nearly $2 billion goes beyond bankruptcy law and should be handled in district court.

Rite Aid is selling its Elixir pharmacy benefit management (PBM) company to another PBM, MedImpact Healthcare Systems for $575 million, the drugstore chain said yesterday, Forbes.com reported. Rite Aid, which filed for bankruptcy protection in October, said the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey approved the sale of the drugstore chain’s Elixir Solutions Business, which Rite Aid executives once described as the company’s “crown jewel.” MedImpact was the apparent winning bidder in an auction for Elixir, according to earlier reports. It’s the latest effort by Rite Aid to restructure the drugstore chain, which has already closed about 200 stores since its filing for chapter 11 protection with potentially more retail locations to close in coming weeks and months. The deal could move MedImpact into the nation’s top five PBMs, according to market share. In 2022, MedImpact was the sixth-largest PBM in the U.S. with 4% market share, according to Drug Channels.