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After real-estate data company CoStar Group Inc. said in February it would buy competitor RentPath Holdings Inc. for $587.5 million, RentPath employees sent emails to customers saying prices would likely increase after the acquisition closed, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. “If the sale does go through CoStar will control pricing for everything and most likely will go up,” a RentPath regional account manager said in a customer email after the deal was announced, according to a lawsuit filed Monday by CoStar that was ineffectively redacted. Days later in February, a RentPath salesperson told customers in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia, “I am strongly suggesting to all clients to lock in our low pricing because if the sale goes through it will not exist EVER again,” the lawsuit said. CoStar said in yesterday’s lawsuit that it was worried that the messages could be used by federal antitrust regulators to block the acquisition and that RentPath management didn’t correct information its employees sent to customers, despite requests from CoStar. In November, the Federal Trade Commission said it would block the deal, saying the transaction “would likely lead to anticompetitive effects.” The RentPath employee messages were outlined in a lawsuit CoStar filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., where RentPath filed for chapter 11 protection in February. CoStar cited the emails to support its allegation RentPath management engaged in “a customer misinformation campaign designed to boost RentPath’s short-term sales while poisoning the FTC approval process.” The companies are now fighting in court over the deal’s collapse. RentPath terminated the agreement and is seeking a $58.75 million breakup fee from CoStar, which has denied it is liable. CoStar said that RentPath didn’t do its best to make sure regulators would approve the transaction and now wants a bankruptcy judge to rule the company violated the terms of the agreement.

The Diocese of Camden, N.J., and a lawyer for clergy sex abuse victims clashed Monday over the diocese's plan to reorganize its finances under chapter 11 protection, the Cherry Hill (N.J.) Courier Post reported. Attorney Jeff Anderson said that the reorganization plan would create a $10 million trust for victims, while directing more than $217 million to funds for other diocesan activities. "This plan has no relationship to their true ability to pay," said Anderson, who described the proposal as "a sneak attack" filed on Dec. 31. In a statement, the diocese said it "wants to continue to pay survivors rather than lawyers and other professional advisors." It claimed attorneys who handle clergy sex abuse cases "seem to want to elongate the process and see more money dissipated on wrangling." The diocese said it filed its plan in federal bankruptcy court in Camden after a committee representing victims refused to negotiate. Anderson, in contrast, contended the diocese acted "without any input from or consideration for clergy abuse survivors."

A top law firm’s raid of a rival’s bankruptcy talent is roiling a corporate feud over the multibillion-dollar cleanup bill for New Jersey’s polluted Passaic River, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The dispute concerns a number of high-profile hires by White & Case LLP, the law firm representing businesses that have sued Argentine energy giant YPF SA over environmental contamination linked to its defunct former subsidiary Maxus Energy Corp. White & Case in October poached rainmaker lawyer Jessica Boelter and other bankruptcy litigators from Sidley Austin LLP, the firm defending YPF against the pollution claims. Potential damages in the lawsuit, viewed as a test of U.S. environmental laws, include an estimated $12 billion tab for cleansing the Passaic of byproducts from the manufacture of Agent Orange, the Vietnam War-era defoliant once produced by a predecessor of Maxus. The dispute took a detour last month when YPF moved to disqualify White & Case, saying that its star hire Boelter knew too much about YPF’s legal strategy, which she helped design.

Tenants in bankrupt Manhattan apartment buildings affiliated with Emerald Equity Group LLC are demanding that housing code violations including rat infestations and bed bugs be immediately addressed as part of a chapter 11 agreement, Bloomberg News reported. Residents are seeking an order compelling the debtor, 203 W 107th Street LLC, to use available funds to address outstanding New York City Housing Court orders and make any urgent repairs to the buildings, according to court papers. Emerald purchased the apartments in December 2016 with the aim of converting them into condominiums as part of its business model of capitalizing on gentrifying neighborhoods. Instead, a cluster of its buildings filed for bankruptcy last week, blaming tougher housing regulations and a tenant rent strike for their debt troubles. Tenants, the debtor’s lawyers and the lender LoanCore, which is taking ownership of the buildings in bankruptcy, reached a tentative agreement to bring the properties into compliance with the housing code, the filing said. Kellner said the buildings have already been found in contempt of housing court orders to address violations, many of which are hazardous.

In the summer of 2007, after Purdue Pharma agreed to pay $600 million to resolve a federal investigation of opioid-marketing misconduct, the Sackler family members at the helm of the drug giant deliberated whether it was time to leave the pharmaceutical business, the Washington Post reported. “I think we need to discuss if fundamentally we want to be in the pharmaceutical business going forward. I would vote no,” wrote David Sackler, who was not in the company at the time of the June email to his father, Richard, and cousin Mortimer, both on the company’s board. The email chain was about the possible buyout of a smaller company. “I think we’ve all had enough of a rough ride over the past 10 years to make me wary of committing for another venture in the space,” he wrote. Copies of the emails, along with memos and messages from a family WhatsApp group chat, were unsealed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, where the company and its affiliates filed for relief in September 2019. The documents offer the most complete picture yet of the internal deliberations of the wealthy family that led one of the largest manufacturers of prescription painkillers during the height of the opioid crisis. Following the Justice Department settlement, the Sacklers met with a bankruptcy attorney, assessed selling the company to a larger firm and were advised to take “defensive measures,” including through “overseas assets with limited transparency and jurisdictional shielding from U.S. judgments,” according to the documents.

Mexican pilots have rejected a cost-saving plan put forward by their own trade union amid talks aimed at agreeing how to restructure airline Grupo Aeromexico, the ASPA union said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Battered by the coronavirus pandemic, Aeromexico filed for chapter 11 protection in a U.S. court in June, and is trying to secure a second tranche of financing. In a statement, the ASPA said the majority of its pilots had in a vote rejected the plan put forward by the union as an alternative to Aeromexico’s own proposal, but that it would keep exploring other options to aid restructuring efforts. The airline earlier this year had up to $1 billion in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing approved, and received an initial $100 million payment in September.

Seacret Direct LLC, a seller of beauty and wellness products, is considering making a bid for WorldVentures Marketing LLC, a travel business that filed for bankruptcy recently, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The potential purchase came to light Wednesday when WorldVentures made its initial appearance in bankruptcy court after seeking protection from creditors last week. Lawyers for WorldVentures said that the company plans to sell itself or its assets. It said nearly two dozen potential buyers have signed nondisclosure agreements, and that it is trying to line up a lead bidder for a court-supervised sale process. Before the bankruptcy, WorldVentures and Seacret had been in discussions about a possible merger or acquisition, bankruptcy documents show. In July, they struck a deal to allow WorldVentures sales representatives to buy and sell Seacret products, and in November they signed a nonbinding letter of intent to try to complete a definitive asset purchase agreement. Seacret remains a potential buyer of WorldVentures, Seacret lawyer Phillip Lamberson said during the hearing. The Plano, Texas-based WorldVentures blamed its chapter 11 filing partly on missteps by past management and the coronavirus pandemic. WorldVentures and some of its sales representatives also have been investigated by regulators in several markets. Those investigations resulted in fines and hurt the brand’s reputation, said Erik Toth, chief restructuring officer for bankrupt affiliate Spherature Investments LLC, in a court filing. Toth is also managing partner for Larx Advisors Inc., which has been hired as restructuring adviser during the reorganization.

The new owners of JCPenney replaced Chief Executive Officer Jill Soltau less than a month after re-launching the department store chain that went bankrupt during the pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. Soltau will depart Dec. 31 and be succeeded by Stanley Shashoua, the chief investment officer of Simon Property Group Inc., while a search for a new CEO is conducted, according to a statement Wednesday. Mall owners Simon and Brookfield Asset Management Inc. acquired the retail operations of J.C. Penney Co. to help keep one of their biggest tenants in business. The brief, two-paragraph announcement gave no explanation for the CEO change. Soltau, hired in October 2018, was in the middle of overseeing her own turnaround plan and putting a new team in place when the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe this year and temporarily shuttered many retail stores. By May, J.C. Penney Co. was bankrupt. She remained in the top job throughout the bankruptcy process, and the new owners highlighted her comments as CEO in the Dec. 7 announcement of the relaunch under the JCPenney name. Simon and Brookfield plan to establish a temporary office of the CEO that will include members of JCPenney’s current management team, according to the statement. J.C. Penney Co. was split up during the bankruptcy into the operating company, which is owned by the mall operators, while lenders get the property company. The latter remains in the chapter 11 process and is expected to emerge in the first half of 2021.

A disgruntled creditor of Speedcast International Ltd., which opposed a financial restructuring of the satellite-communications company, has obtained clearance to submit a late takeover offer to buy the company out of bankruptcy, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. “We want to bid as soon as we can,” said Al Hogan, a lawyer for creditor Black Diamond Capital Management LLC, during a hearing Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. Subject to outstanding due diligence, Hogan said that “Black Diamond would absolutely prefer to own this asset than to see it sold to Centerbridge at the price under the current plan.” Black Diamond’s emergence as Speedcast’s potential acquirer is an unexpected twist that arose during a multiday trial over a plan backed by private-equity firm Centerbridge Partners LP. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur is allowing Black Diamond to bid for Speedcast and formulate an alternative transaction to get the company out of chapter 11 protection, after he expressed concerns about approving the Centerbridge-backed plan. Speedcast came to bankruptcy carrying about $689 million in long-term debt, which the company intends to cut through a financial restructuring. The company anticipates emerging from chapter 11 in the first quarter of 2021.

With mediation efforts ongoing, China Fishery Group (CFG) trustee William Brandt believes that the Peruvian fishmeal and fish oil maker will be able to achieve a "value-maximizing exit" from bankruptcy by the end of 2021, Undercurrent News reported. Brandt, who was appointed in 2016 by a New York judge to oversee CFG amid the $1.5 billion bankruptcy filing of its Hong Kong-based parent company Pacific Andes International Holdings (PAIH), said earlier this month that talks to resolve thorny issue holding up a sale of CFG are showing promise but will require more time to conclude. In the meantime, CFG has used up all but $5.5 million of a $45m loan it took from the company's own resources to pay the administrative costs of the bankruptcy proceeding. Brandt has asked Bankruptcy Judge James Garrity to approve increasing CFG's potential borrowing ceiling to $60 million.