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A U.S. bankruptcy court judge granted SAS AB’s request to speed the process of paying $3 million to advisers of the Scandinavian airline’s investor group, keeping its restructuring on track over opposition from creditor Apollo Global Management Inc., Bloomberg News reported. Judge Michael E. Wiles set an Oct. 12 hearing on a motion to expedite reimbursement to advisers to the group led by Air France-KLM and Castlelake LP, who are set to take control of SAS as it exits from chapter 11 protection. SAS’s request appeared to be “in the best interests of the debtors, their estates, their creditors, and all parties in interest,” the judge said in a court filing on Tuesday. Apollo had objected to the expedited hearing, arguing that the move would make it harder to prevail on its plan to object to the payment. It added that it won’t have enough time to review and respond to the reimbursement motion. Apollo provided a $700 million debtor-in-possession term loan to SAS as it went through chapter 11 reorganization. While the U.S. equity firm reportedly sought to buy a majority stake, SAS last week chose rival Air France-KLM group, which also includes the Danish state and Lind Invest ApS.

Deutsche Bank AG squared off against the U.S. parent company of Lehman Brothers in a London court this week, hoping to squeeze more money from obscure notes issued by the long-dead bank’s U.K. arm, Bloomberg News reported. The German lender argued that it should be paid money recovered from the U.K. unit ahead of the company’s U.S. parent. Deutsche Bank is leading the case as a holder of a certain type of junior security issued from Lehman’s European unit. It’s the second trial over the ranking of those subordinated notes, after first handing Deutsche Bank and other holders a big win at the U.K. Court of Appeal. While some investors discarded the Enhanced Capital Advantaged Preferred Securities (ECAPS) for nothing in the years following the U.S. lender’s collapse, so much has been generated by the insolvency of Lehman’s U.K. arm that there is now a fight over the interest on the ECAPS claim. “Maybe interest was a golden possibility that no one had thought of at the time,” Judge Robert Hildyard said while questioning the barrister representing Deutsche Bank.

Montgomery Realty Group, the developer behind a planned 18-story hotel in San Francisco, has filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy, The Real Deal reported. The petition comes just a day before a scheduled foreclosure auction of the site from the firm’s lenders. The site, located at 447 Battery Street in the Financial District, contains the remnants of the Jones-Thierbach Coffee Company. In May 2022, the three-story, 27,000-square-foot commercial property was designated a city landmark owing to “its association with the San Francisco coffee industry and with reconstruction of downtown San Francisco following the 1906 earthquake and fires,” according to Planning Department records. Montgomery first submitted development proposals for the property in 2017. Initial plans called for a 19-story building with 182 hotel rooms, eight condos and a 4,700-square-foot restaurant. The proposal for the site later changed into an 18-story property with 198 hotel rooms, nine residential units and two restaurant spaces totaling nearly 7,500 square feet. Montgomery, headed by Rajendra Maniar, filed its bankruptcy petition on Oct. 4, according to records from California’s Northern District court. The firm estimated its liabilities between $10 million and $50 million.

The sale of failed trucker Yellow’s real estate is turning into a battle for a competitive edge in a corner of the trucking industry that forms a crucial part of the U.S. economy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Estes Express Lines, the largest privately held trucking company in the country with revenues last year of more than $5 billion, is the stalking-horse, or lead bidder, for Yellow’s nationwide network of truck terminals with a bid of $1.525 billion. If Estes wins the auction, scheduled for late November, it would give the Richmond, Va.-based operator a big leg up in the thriving less-than-truckload segment of the trucking industry. The sector has been growing about 15% to 20% annually over the past two years and well-run LTL carriers are operating with margins of 15% or more, said Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group. “It’s even more attractive and desirable to have control over the assets which are critical entry barriers,” Jindel said. Yellow went out of business this summer, dragged down by years of poor management, heavy debts and a fight with the Teamsters union. It left behind about 30,000 workers, 170 terminals and a once-in-a-generation opportunity for rivals to expand.

An award-winning North Texas distillery that declared bankruptcy earlier this year has been purchased for $6 million, according to U.S. bankruptcy court records, the Dallas Morning News reported. Les Beasley, the master distiller and founder of Whiskey Hollow, received a $250,000 deposit toward the sale from the buyer, Pals WH Holdings LLC. Kevin Lange is listed as the firm’s president in an asset purchase agreement filing. He’s an Austin-based financial adviser and owner of Legacy One Financial Advisers, a wealth management firm. When the deal closes, the deposit will be applied as a credit against the $6 million purchase. Included in the purchase and sale of assets are typical elements, like the land and the facility with all its improvements. Also included in the deal, according to court documents, are machinery, vehicles, inventory, ingredients and finished goods. The filings detail the barrels by spirit age, what kind of wood the liquors aged in and the thousands of bottles in inventory.

Shift Technologies said it would file a petition for chapter 11 protection as it winds down its business, MarketWatch.com reported. The San Francisco-based used-car retailer said Friday it would use cash on hand and proceeds from selling off inventory to support shutting down operations during bankruptcy. Shift said on its website and two locations in Oakland, Calif., and Pomona, Calif., have stopped operations. Chief Executive Ayman Moussa said the company attempted to raise funds and restructure to allow for continuing operations, but those efforts were unsuccessful. "This was not the outcome we had expected or hoped to achieve," Moussa said. The company announced a restructuring in July, reducing 34% of its workforce, to cut costs and extend its cash runway.

Investigators at a key US regulator have concluded that the co-founder of Voyager Digital Ltd. broke derivatives regulations before the failed crypto lender plunged into bankruptcy last year, Bloomberg News reported. Staff in the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement division recommended internally that the agency accuse Stephen Ehrlich of breaking its rules by misleading customers about the safety of their assets following a probe into Voyager’s conduct. CFTC commissioners are now voting on whether to approve an enforcement action against him within days, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the confidential deliberations. The CFTC can seek fines and impose other non-criminal penalties on those it accuses of wrongdoing. The agency, whose investigations don’t always result in enforcement actions, declined to comment. Voyager disclosed in August 2022 as part of its bankruptcy case that the CFTC had sought information related to its business, customers and lending activities. Ehrlich, who was also chief executive officer when Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, has not been formally accused of any wrongdoing. In an emailed statement, he said he was “angered and perplexed” by the government’s anticipated civil claims and called them unfounded.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s two multimillion-dollar luxury jets are now subject to forfeiture, according to a filing from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on Oct. 4, CoinTelegraph.com reported. The document states the possibility of forfeiture comes as a result of the “offenses described in Counts One through Four and Seven of Indictment 22 Cr. 673 (LAK),” which were brought against Bankman-Fried. The aircraft listed are a Bombardier Global and an Embraer Legacy. These two aircraft are currently at the heart of an ownership debacle between the government, FTX and the aviation company operating the jets, Island Air Capital, according to documents filed on Sept. 21 with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. In the arguments, the government said both aircraft are subject to forfeiture due to being purchased with fraudulent funds, while FTX says the loans used to purchase the jets were not documented.

An estimated 1 million customers are potentially facing losses after FTX, one of the largest crypto exchanges at the time, suddenly collapsed and filed for bankruptcy in November, Reuters reported. It soon emerged that customer funds had gone missing. FTX founder and former-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is accused of embezzling $10 billion from unsuspecting customers to prop up his hedge fund Alameda Research, buy luxury properties and fund political donations. His trial began in New York this week. On Wednesday, Bankman-Fried's attorney told the court that his client had overlooked risk management but did not steal customer money. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors are calling some FTX customers to testify that they were told their assets were safe, and to share how FTX's collapse affected them. Customers Reuters spoke with said they have created support groups to help each another navigate the complex bankruptcy claims process, while others said they have been targeted by scammers promising to retrieve their cash.

Texas Capital Bank said it was convinced by the U.S. government to loan $28 million in December to help a bankrupt reverse-mortgage company fund payments to elderly homeowners and avert a crisis in the reverse-mortgage industry, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. But the Dallas lender was left empty-handed after the government said it extinguished the bank’s collateral rights, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday against the Government National Mortgage Association, known as Ginnie Mae, and its parent agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Texas Capital Bank said that it was induced by Ginnie Mae to extend a bankruptcy loan to Reverse Mortgage Investment Trust, one of the largest lenders participating in the government-backed reverse-mortgage program. HUD and Ginnie Mae declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Starwood Capital Group-backed RMIT filed for chapter 11 in November with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., facing a liquidity crunch because of rising interest rates. After the bankruptcy filing, RMIT failed to fund payments to thousands of elderly homeowners, according to the bank’s complaint. Ginnie Mae allegedly told Texas Capital Bank that its loan was needed to fund those draws while avoiding a catastrophic disruption to the reverse-mortgage program, the bank said in its lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas.