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Small groups of former Boy Scouts who say they were sexually abused by Scouting leaders are seeking more information about how much money local councils and insurers will be contributing to settle decades worth of sex abuse claims as part of the Boy Scouts of America’s reorganization, Reuters reported. The former Scouts filed a series of objections on Wednesday and Thursday in Delaware bankruptcy court to the organization's disclosure materials for its proposed reorganization plan. It includes a proposed settlement of more than 80,000 sex abuse claims filed against the Boy Scouts. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein will consider the disclosure materials at a hearing on May 19. If she approves them, the Boy Scouts will be able to send them to creditors who are entitled to vote on the proposed plan. The plan would set up a trust to be funded by a mix of cash, artwork, insurance policies, and at least $425 million from local councils in exchange for releases against legal actions stemming from sex abuse allegations. The organization’s proposal has already been met with opposition from groups representing the interests of abuse survivors in the bankruptcy, including an official tort claimants' committee and a group called the Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice. This week, law firms representing small groups of individual abuse claimants filed papers saying that the disclosure materials need to include valuations of each local council’s assets, how many sex abuse claims have been lodged against each local council, and how much each council is contributing to the settlement trust in exchange for a release of abuse claims. The claimant groups say the information is necessary for them to determine whether the contributions are worth giving up their claims against their local councils.

A group of investment firms including Centerbridge Partners is preparing a new offer to buy Hertz Global Holdings Inc. out of bankruptcy, setting up a final showdown over the company in an auction next week, Bloomberg News reported. The group, led by Centerbridge, Warburg Pincus and Dundon Capital Partners, plans to sweeten a previous offer that was surpassed by a plan from Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management. Terms of the new bid couldn’t immediately be learned, but any exit plan would be subject to bankruptcy court and board approval. The Knighthead and Certares plan assigned Hertz an enterprise value of around $6.2 billion and offered shareholders a mix of cash and warrants worth around $2.25 a share, Bloomberg previously reported. Hertz will review final proposals from both groups to determine if they meet its qualifications, and pick a winner in an auction currently scheduled for Monday. The Centerbridge group has until the end of Friday to submit a formal counteroffer, which kicks off the court-supervised auction process.

Judson College, a 183-year-old private Baptist college and one of the nation's oldest universities for women, plans to close its doors and file chapter 11 protection, the Birmingham (Ala.) Business Journal reported. The Judson College Board of Trustees yesterday voted to take the drastic steps in what the college called a heartbreaking decision. It follows months of urgent fundraising efforts and the exploration of mergers and other options aimed at addressing the operating deficit for the college, which is located in Marion in Alabama's Black Belt region. The college will suspend academic operations after the summer term ends on July 31. Judson's board had previously approved a budget that was based on confidence in securing significant donors to close its deficit, but those funds never materialized. At the same time, enrollment had dwindled from 145 to 80 returning students after 41 seniors graduated at the end of April.

Bankruptcy administrators for defunct retailer Toys “R” Us Inc. are trying to put its former top leaders on trial before a jury over the millions of dollars in bonuses they pocketed days before the company’s plunge into bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The proposed jury trial concerns the practice of corporate executives collecting bonuses shortly before their businesses file for bankruptcy, leaving debts unpaid and employees at risk. While the Toys “R” Us bonus payments occurred in 2017, a range of businesses paid similar bonuses during the COVID-19 pandemic as they teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Companies including rental-car giant Hertz Global Holdings Inc., department store chain J.C. Penney Co. and oil-and-gas driller Chesapeake Energy Corp. all dispensed bonuses shortly before they filed for bankruptcy last year as COVID-19 upended the U.S. economy. The stated rationale for the bonuses was retention — to persuade top executives to stick in their jobs despite their employers’ troubles. By paying bonuses before bankruptcy, the companies got around legal restrictions on such “stay pay,” which kick in once a business files for chapter 11. Creditors largely grumbled in private, but few took action in bankruptcy court to try to get the money back. Now, however, the practice is being hotly disputed in the aftermath of the 2017 bankruptcy of Toys “R” Us — one of the few times the legality of retention bonuses has been seriously tested in bankruptcy court. Although the company’s once-mighty fleet of toy stores is long gone, a bankruptcy trust set up to scrounge up money for unpaid suppliers is still around, as a vehicle for litigation.

Archegos Capital is preparing for insolvency, triggered by banks’ attempts to recoup some of the $10bn they lost on its soured bets in March, the Financial Times reported. The family office run by Bill Hwang has hired restructuring advisers to assess potential legal claims from banks and to plan for a possible winding down of its operations. Six banks that acted as prime brokers to Archegos — Credit Suisse, Nomura, Morgan Stanley, UBS, MUFG and Mizuho — lost more than $10bn when they were forced to liquidate the family office’s positions in US-listed companies such as ViacomCBS after it failed to meet margin calls. A number of them are preparing to issue “letters of demand” to the firm — a request for payment ahead of launching a legal claim. They first want to finish closing out the Archegos positions; last week Credit Suisse said it had sold 97 per cent of the related securities. Lenders are also investigating whether Hwang’s family office withheld or provided incorrect information about the scale of its borrowing from other prime brokers.

Shock waves from the deep freeze that swept Texas in February continue to reverberate through the energy industry, threatening a stake in a Texas wind farm held by funds managed by investment firm BlackRock Inc., WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A New York judge heard arguments yesterday in a dispute between BlackRock-controlled Mariah Del Norte LLC, a wind venture knocked offline during the February storm, and Citigroup Inc., which billed nearly $100 million on an electricity hedge. That amount represents Citi’s costs for buying electricity to cover the power Mariah failed to deliver, according to court papers. At a hearing yesterday in the Supreme Court of New York County, Judge Robert Reed said he would hear evidence at a trial to be scheduled soon on Mariah’s request to prohibit Citi from taking action after it called a default over the wind farm’s failure to pay. Many wind farms in Texas, to get construction financing, enter into long-term hedged contracts with financial institutions in which the operator agrees to provide a steady stream of electricity to the counterparty. In return, the financial institution, often a Wall Street bank, generally agrees to pay a set price for the electricity. If the operator can’t deliver, it agrees to pay to purchase electricity on the wholesale market, or agrees to pay the bank to purchase power itself. Mariah has said it needs protection from Citi and the risk that the bank could seize the wind farm’s equity interests and force an asset sale to cover the nearly $100 million debt.

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. determined a proposal from Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management to buy the car renter was superior to an existing offer from a rival investor group, Bloomberg News reported. The decision further escalates the brawl to own the car renter out of bankruptcy as travel rebounds and means Hertz’s current reorganization sponsor, a group led by Centerbridge Partners, would need to counter with an updated plan of its own to stay in the running. If the company receives further proposals from either group that meet its qualifications, Hertz would hold an auction on May 10. The Knighthead bid assigned Hertz an enterprise value of $6.2 billion, paid debt holders in full and offered shareholders cash and a chance to purchase warrants that valued their holdings at around $2.25 a share, Bloomberg previously reported.

A Justice Department lawyer said that National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre has failed to provide adequate oversight of the gun-rights organization and that management should be removed or curtailed if a bankruptcy judge allows the NRA to remain in chapter 11, the Wall Street Journal reported. The government lawyer’s criticism of NRA management came at the conclusion of a monthlong trial over the bankruptcy, supporting New York Attorney General Letitia James’s argument that LaPierre put the NRA into chapter 11 to try to evade accountability for spending abuses, which he and the NRA have denied. James sued to dissolve the NRA in August and is seeking to either have the chapter 11 case thrown out or to bring in an independent trustee to take charge of the NRA in bankruptcy. The trial concluded yesterday with closing arguments in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas that outlined vastly different visions on what should happen to the 150-year-old group. New York and federal authorities as well as the NRA’s former ad agency contend the not-for-profit is badly mismanaged and an independent fiduciary is needed to rein in Mr. LaPierre. The NRA, meanwhile, said LaPierre and his prodigious fundraising are its most valuable asset, that its board is independent and that it has a plan to bolster its corporate governance and restructure its affairs through chapter 11, setting up operations in what it says is the friendlier jurisdiction of Texas. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale now will decide which path the NRA will take and said yesterday that it is one of the most important cases he will rule on during his judicial career. Judge Hale said he intends to retire next year. Assistant U.S. Trustee Lisa Lambert, part of the Justice Department unit overseeing the nation’s bankruptcy courts, said that NRA management hasn’t been accountable for lavish spending and financial irregularities that date back years before its January bankruptcy filing and persisted even during the chapter 11 case.

Cosi Inc. is seeking to accelerate its bankruptcy case in order to have a shot at federal funds available to restaurants struggling during the pandemic, Bloomberg Law reported. The fast casual chain hopes to have a hearing on confirming its plan by June 30, according to court filings. Judge Brendan L. Shannon of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware already approved Cosi’s request for an expedited hearing on interim approval of its plan disclosures, setting the date for May 11. The Restaurant Revitalization Fund, part of the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package signed into law in March, provides restaurants and bars with up to $10 million from a $28.6 billion fund. The Small Business Administration, which administers the RRF, is now accepting applications for the program. The RRF is likely to be underfunded, meaning “applicants who do not submit their applications as soon as the window for applications opens will not be approved for the grant” because the money has dried up, Cosi said in an April 30 filing. The fast casual chain previously tried for a Paycheck Protection Program loan but was thwarted when the SBA blocked bankrupt borrowers from applying. The restaurant’s push to expedite its plan isn’t surprising, as a shift in SBA policy regarding PPP applications is expected to push small, bankrupt companies toward faster plan approvals. The agency recently said businesses with court-confirmed plans aren’t “presently involved” in bankruptcy and, thus, can apply for the loans. The SBA has taken a similar stance with respect to the RRF, according to agency guidance.

Investment firms Knighthead Capital Management and Certares Management submitted a sweetened offer to buy Hertz Global Holdings Inc. out of bankruptcy in a deal that could see equity investors recover $2.25 a share, Bloomberg News reported. Hertz will evaluate the proposal that assigns the rental-car company a more than $6.2 billion enterprise value to determine if it’s higher than one from its current reorganization sponsor, a group backed by Centerbridge Partners. The bid includes fully committed debt and equity financing, the people said. Hertz bondholders would be paid in full while shareholders get the chance to own a bigger portion of the reorganized company. Hertz’s existing equity holders would receive 50 cents per share plus the chance to participate in either a boosted $1.3 billion rights offering or warrants for up to 10% of the reorganized company. Together, the cash and warrants would be worth around $2.25 a share.