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The push by creditors of Barretts Minerals to move the talc supplier’s chapter 11 case out of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston was blocked by presiding judge Marvin Isgur, according to a court filing Thursday. The official unsecured creditors committee in November filed a motion seeking to transfer the case from Texas to Montana, noting that Barretts has its headquarters in that state and conducts its primary business of talc mining there. The committee said that Barretts’s only operations in Texas are a single office suite, a processing and transportation facility in Bay City, and a couple of real-estate properties that contain fast-food restaurants. They argued that the company’s choice of filing in Texas amounts to “blatant forum shopping.” Barretts, the former Pfizer minerals business, filed for bankruptcy in October while facing hundreds of personal injury lawsuits alleging that the talc the company supplied for cosmetics products caused exposure to asbestos. In a response to the committee’s motion, Barretts’s chief restructuring officer, David Gordon, said that of the more than 550 pending talc lawsuits against the business, he isn’t aware of any in Montana. In contrast, he said he is aware of at least six lawsuits against Barretts in Texas. He said that Barretts’s decision to file its chapter 11 case in Houston was the result of “careful consideration of a number of factors, including the location of their assets, the logistics of travel for their executives and professionals, and the costs associated with filing in the Southern District of Texas compared to other jurisdictions.”

The Diocese of Sacramento will seek chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after more than 250 lawsuits claiming sexual abuse by clergy and other staff, Bishop Jaime Soto said on Saturday, CBSNews.com reported. Soto said the diocese intends to seek chapter 11 protection by March 2024. "There are many victim-survivors awaiting compensation for the reprehensible sins committed against them," Soto said in a statement to his parishioners. "The diocese faces more than 250 lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by clergy or other church staff. The reorganization process will allow me to equitably respond to the large number of those who are victim-survivors of abuse." A fund would be created to distribute to all victims, the diocese said. "Without such a process, it is likely that diocesan funds would be exhausted by the first cases to proceed to trial, leaving nothing for the many other victim-survivors still waiting for compensation," the diocese said in a statement. Soto announced in March that filing for bankruptcy was a possibility.

Near Intelligence Inc., a publicly traded software firm that provides data insights to major companies including Wendy’s Co. and Ford Motor Co., filed for bankruptcy on Friday with plans to sell itself, Bloomberg News reported. The Pasadena, Calif.-based company listed estimated assets of at least $50 million and liabilities of $100 million, according to court papers. The bankruptcy filing lets Near Intelligence continue operating while it pursues a court-supervised sales process, according to a statement. Blue Torch Capital, a private credit firm that focuses on middle-market companies, has provided an opening offer of at least $50 million for its assets. Blue Torch Finance will lend the company $16 million to help it keep operating, the statement said.

Three years after entering and exiting chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust may have to do it all over again, The Real Deal reported. The biggest storm cloud hovering over PREIT is $1 billion in credit facilities, primarily held by Wells Fargo. The maturity date on those facilities is Dec. 10 and the company doesn’t have any more options to extend the deadline. This matches the rest of the company’s financial picture. In the third quarter, PREIT posted a net loss of $63.9 million. Same-store net operating income dropped 5.3 percent year-over-year, while core mall total occupancy and core mall non-anchor occupancy also decreased annually.

Mercon Coffee Corp., the bankrupt global coffee trader, must try to negotiate a cheaper way to fund its restructuring case after a U.S. judge rejected a proposed loan from Coöperatieve Rabobank, Bloomberg News reported. Rabobank had agreed to loan Mercon as much as $40 million that would pay about 15% interest, plus an upfront fee of 3% on part of the debt and the payment of $3.8 million in expenses, according to court documents and Bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Wiles. The loan also included provisions that made it likely Mercon would be forced to liquidate instead of being bought or reorganized, Wiles said. “On the whole I don’t think that arrangement is appropriate,” Wiles said during in the company’s first court hearing, which was held by telephone. “It is far too generous.” Mercon will try to negotiate a new deal with Rabobank and present it to Wiles in the next few days, company attorney Paul Keenan said. The company and Rabobank had argued it needed the loan just in case the price of coffee dropped so much that Mercon needed to make multi-million margin calls. The company has at least $12 million in cash in the bank, Keenan said. If the company can come to new terms with Rabobank, it may ask the judge to approve the loan during a rare, weekend court hearing, Keenan said. The company’s cash forecast showed Mercon won’t need any more money for at least the next few weeks, Daniel Rudewicz, a lawyer with the U.S. Trustee said during the hearing. That means the company may not need to borrow any money, Rudewicz said.

A lawyer who is trying to broker a settlement in Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder cancer lawsuits proposed that it can resolve the decade-long litigation and any future cases for $19 billion — $10 billion more than the company offered in two failed trips through bankruptcy court, Bloomberg News reported. James Conlan, a former law firm partner who used to defend J&J against baby powder suits, now runs a business aimed at helping corporations corral liability in mass personal injury litigation. He floated his proposal to J&J’s board in November, according to a court filing unsealed this week. But J&J rejected it and insisted a third chapter 11 filing by one of its units is the best way forward, even though courts previously ruled the world’s largest maker of health-care products wasn’t in enough financial distress to use that process. But Conlan’s proposal — backed by leaders of law firms suing J&J over claims that the talcum in its baby powder contained cancerous asbestos — is the first time plaintiffs have said publicly how much J&J should pay to resolve more than 50,000 cases that have created an overhang on the company’s stock price. Clare Boyle, a J&J spokeswoman, said in a statement that an “improper and unethical collaboration” between Conlan and a plaintiffs’ lawyer “was designed to thwart a reasonable and appropriate resolution of the talc litigation.” J&J contends its talc-based products don’t cause cancer and it has marketed its baby powder appropriately for more than 100 years. Still, the New Brunswick, New Jersey-based company has been moving since 2020 to replace talcum powder in its products with cornstarch.

Yellow, the trucking company that shut down its operations and filed for bankruptcy protection this summer, on Wednesday rejected a trucking executive’s bid to buy and restructure its business, the New York Times reported. In a letter sent to the prospective buyer, Yellow’s lawyers contended that the bid was “not viable,” saying they had not gotten any indication that the bid had the support of the company’s creditors, including the Treasury Department, which had made an emergency loan to the company during the pandemic. The letter also said that the plan to revive Yellow underestimated the costs and difficulties of such an effort. The bid would not be “confirmable by a bankruptcy court or in the best interests of Yellow’s stakeholders,” the letter said. Yellow’s management intends to soon complete its own bankruptcy plan, which involves selling off the company’s assets to different buyers. The company this week released the results of an auction in which the winning bidders committed to spend nearly $1.9 billion on 128 terminals, Yellow’s most valuable assets. On Dec. 12, the company plans to seek approval for the sales from a federal bankruptcy judge in Delaware.

Cryptocurrency prices have been on a wild tear this year. But thousands of FTX customers, whose tokens have been trapped on the exchange for more than a year, are missing out on the action, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. That is because the new managers running FTX plan to sell all of their bitcoin and other cryptocurrency and return a sum of cash to customers, according to a draft plan FTX is expected to propose to a bankruptcy judge later this month. While the run-up in crypto prices means FTX could have more money to distribute, some FTX customers are realizing they may never recover any of their increasingly valuable tokens. The exchange says it is easier to repay customers in cash because of the difficulty in untangling the company’s poor record-keeping and figuring out who has title to the exchange’s tens of millions of leftover tokens. U.S. bankruptcy law also says unpaid creditors can only demand to be repaid in dollars, no matter if they are owed euros, yen, or bitcoin. The expected proposal is a shock, many FTX customers say, as many of them believed they would eventually recover some of their frozen savings. Read more.

Be sure to listen to the latest ABI TechBytes podcast examining fiduciary duties in cryptocurrency cases!

Mercon Coffee Group, one of the world's largest coffee traders, has filled for bankruptcy protection in the United States due to what it defined as "exceptionally challenging operating environment," according to a document seen by Reuters. Mercon, which has operations in all the major producing regions including Brazil, Vietnam and Central America, said in a letter sent to clients that problems in recent years such as the logistical disruption during the pandemic, frost and drought in Brazil, price volatility and rising interest rates all combined to hurt the company's financial situation. In the letter, signed by Mercon's Chief Executive Oscar Sevilla, the company said that lenders have elected "not to extend credit agreements, resulting in extremely tight working capital conditions." Court documents from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York show Mercon and its affiliates in several countries have a total debt of $363 million. Among the largest creditors are several banks in the countries where Mercon operates, but also trade companies in Brazil, Central America and the United States.

Hildred Capital Management is set to buy bankrupt baby brand Hello Bello after nobody bested the healthcare-focused private equity firm’s $65 million opening offer, according to court papers, Bloomberg News reported. Hello Bello, best known for its sustainable diapers, filed for chapter 11 protection less than two months ago. Actors Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard launched the Los Angeles-based company in 2019 alongside a deal to sell the products exclusively at Walmart Inc., according to a statement at the time. Today, its products are also sold at other retailers and online. Hildred plans to combine Hello Bello with Hyland’s Naturals, another portfolio company that sells supplements and over-the-counter medicine, under one umbrella parent company, according to people with knowledge of the plans. Hildred is set to hold Hello Bello in a newly launched continuation fund expected to close above $650 million.