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After months of cross filings arguing whether former Alaska Dispatch News owner Alice Rogoff must reveal documents related to a $13 million bank loan, a bankruptcy judge decided it’s all fair game except for her marital settlement agreement, the Alaska Journal of Commerce reported. The bottom line of Bankruptcy Judge Gary Spraker’s March 21 decision is that Rogoff’s finances are not confidential as it relates to the $13 million loan from Northrim Bank used to purchase the Anchorage Daily News from McClatchy Co. Spraker ordered Northrim to turn over all documents to the public trustee Nacole Jipping in an unredacted form, including memos relating to Rogoff’s personal finances. Rogoff filed for chapter 11 protection on Aug. 12, 2017, after the newspaper she had owned from 2014-2017 fell into financial distress totaling millions in losses per year and had been sued for eviction by GCI the day before. She sold the company to the Binkley family on Sept. 11 for $1 million and the name was eventually changed back to the Anchorage Daily News.

Cobalt International Energy yesterday cut a deal with the official committee representing its unsecured creditors, removing a significant obstacle to confirmation of its chapter 11 bankruptcy liquidation plan, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Unsecured creditors said that they would agree to drop a threat of lawsuits and objections to the Houston oil-and-gas company’s plan, in exchange for up to $23 million in cash. The proposed settlement does not remove all objections to Cobalt’s chapter 11 plan, which has been criticized as the result of disappointing auction results. Judge Marvin Isgur is conducting confirmation hearings on Cobalt’s chapter 11 plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, before a packed house of lawyers representing creditors owed, in the aggregate, nearly $3 billion. The company is a casualty of depressed energy prices and disastrous dealings off the coast of Angola, which spurred federal investigations and left Cobalt with a failed deal. A $500 million settlement with Angola’s state-controlled energy group, Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola - Empresa Pública, or Sonangol, is part of Cobalt’s chapter 11 payout plan.

U.S. mall owners Namdar Realty Group and Washington Prime Group Inc. are in talks to acquire U.S. department store operator Bon-Ton Stores Inc. out of bankruptcy, Reuters reported. Namdar’s and Washington Prime’s bid for Bon-Ton offers a path for the retailer to survive, three sources said. Firms specializing in liquidation plan to submit a $740 million offer for Bon-Ton in partnership with its bondholders. If that bid were to prevail, the company would be dismantled Bon-Ton, which filed for bankruptcy in February with about 250 stores, is a significant tenant of both Namdar and Washington Prime malls. Its survival would help protect the value of these malls. Namdar plans to work with its partner, Mason Asset Management, which jointly invests with Namdar and manages its properties, on the bid. Bon-Ton extended the deadline for bids in its bankruptcy auction last week to yesterday, after announcing it was in active discussions with a bidder whom it did not identify. That bidder is the consortium of Namdar and Washington Prime. Read more. 

A special episode of “Eye on Bankruptcy” focused on the next wave of retail cases will be taped before a live audience at the Annual Spring Meeting! Watch a preview. To register for the Annual Spring Meeting, please click here. 

Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the forthcoming ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available for pre-order at the ABI Store. 

A bankruptcy judge yesterday approved a settlement between Philadelphia Energy Solutions and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, paving the way for the largest oil refinery on the East Coast to emerge from bankruptcy protection, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Kevin Gross of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., approved the settlement over the objection of an ethanol trade group that claimed the deal allowed the troubled refinery to skirt environmental compliance costs that its competitors still have to shoulder. Judge Gross, ruling from the bench, said that the settlement was fair and in any event, the trade group lacked standing to oppose the deal. The pact relieves Philadelphia Energy of the need to spend an estimated $175 million to make good on its environmental compliance obligations under the law. Justice Department lawyer Alan S. Tenenbaum yesterday acknowledged the conflict between environmental and bankruptcy statutory schemes but said that absent a deal allowing Philadelphia Energy to cut its Renewable Fuel Standard obligations by about half, the company would be at risk of shutting down. Read more. 

Join experts at the "Power Industry: What's Next?" panel at the Annual Spring Meeting to discuss future power-industry issues that you should know about. FTI Consulting's Carlyn Taylor provides a preview. To register, please click here: 

After processing millions of cherries and apples over the past 78 years, Cherry Growers Inc. will close its doors and auction off its equipment at the end of this month, according to company officials and the auction house that will liquidate its assets, MLive.com reported. Cherry Growers, which filed for chapter 11 protection in August 2017, announced it will close its doors and sell off its equipment after failing to find another processor to take over its operations. Headquartered in Grawn near Traverse City, Mich., ownership of Cherry Growers Inc. is shared by 53 Michigan cherry and apple growers. The company, which processes cherries and applies, employed about 75 workers. New Mill Capital, a national asset acquisition and disposition firm, has been hired to sell the equipment assets of Cherry Growers, Inc.

Lynn Tilton’s bankrupt investment vehicle, Zohar III, should be taken over by a trustee because of the “debilitating and entrenched acrimony” between Tilton and Zohar’s creditors, a government watchdog that monitors corporate bankruptcies said yesterday in a court filing, Bloomberg News reported. The U.S. Trustee also cited Tilton’s “apparent conflicts of interest” and asked the judge overseeing Zohar’s bankruptcy to either install a trustee to run the company, or to appoint an examiner to investigate the funds. Tilton put Zohar III into bankruptcy last month to resolve lawsuits involving the structured debt vehicles she used to finance distressed companies. The acrimony between Zohar III and its creditors, including MBIA Insurance Corp. and Alvarez & Marsal Zohar Management LLC, is disrupting the bankruptcy case, Brya Keilson, a trial attorney with the U.S. Trustee’s Office, said in court papers.

Accessories seller Charming Charlie LLC won court approval yesterday to move forward with its reorganization plan, allowing the chain to survive its bankruptcy proceedings, a rare achievement for a retailer in recent years, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. “You’re performing a rather unusual task of reorganizing a retailer in 2017 and 2018,” Judge Christopher Sontchi said to attorneys in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. “I’m quite happy to enter an order confirming the plan.” Charming Charlie sought chapter 11 protection in December faced with a cash crunch and mounting debt load. Like many of its mall-based peers, the retailer blamed its woes on the major challenges facing the overall industry, namely the consumer shift to online shopping. Charming Charlie has closed more than 100 of its 375 stores in the U.S. and Canada since December. In the months leading up to the chapter 11 filing the company reached a restructuring pact with its lenders and backers, which include private-equity firms TSG Consumer Partners and Hancock Park Associates. The deal will see Charming Charlie’s lenders swap their debt for control of the company. Read more. 

A special episode of “Eye on Bankruptcy” focused on the next wave of retail cases will be taped before a live audience at the Annual Spring Meeting! Watch a preview. To register for the Annual Spring Meeting, please click here.

The bankruptcy of a fleet of FirstEnergy Corp. nuclear and fossil fuel plants won’t stop their quest for U.S. government assistance as they battle gas-fired and renewable competitors for survival, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Plunging electricity prices, high debt levels and an “ongoing loss of financial support” from the FirstEnergy parent company drove several power-generation subsidiaries into bankruptcy, their attorney Scott Alberino said yesterday in their debut appearance since filing for chapter 11. Despite the bankruptcy, Alberino said that the lead debtor FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. (FES) would continue pressing government regulators to take emergency action favoring coal- and nuclear-power plants over other energy sources, a high-stakes test of which type of fuel should power the U.S. electric grid. The request is forcing the U.S. Department of Energy to decide whether the country’s largest grid operator should dispatch energy from FES plants effectively ahead of competing gas-fired and renewable assets.

The U.S. Supreme Court offered hope for Tribune Co. creditors who are seeking to claw back money from the media company’s former shareholders, Bloomberg News reported. Two justices said without explanation that the Supreme Court might lack the six-justice quorum needed to act in the case. Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, however, suggested the lower courts might revisit a ruling that threw out the case. The two justices pointed to a recent Supreme Court ruling that cast doubt on the lower court decision. The creditors are looking to get money back from shareholders who sold Tribune for more than $8 billion in 2007. Less than a year later, the company filed for bankruptcy. Bondholders sued, arguing that the takeover by billionaire Sam Zell and the company’s own employees was so ill-conceived as to leave Tribune unable to pay its debts. The Supreme Court’s quorum problem might have stemmed at least in part from the justices’ stock ownership and the long list of companies involved in the case as onetime Tribune shareholders. Justice Samuel Alito’s most recent financial disclosure form, for example, shows he owned shares in PNC Financial Services Group Inc., which is involved in the case. Alito is one of three justices, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer, who own stock in a number of individual companies. The Second Circuit threw out the case, citing a legal provision known as a safe harbor that protects banks, securities firms and other intermediaries from having transactions undone by a bankruptcy trustee. The Tribune creditors said in their appeal that the safe harbor didn’t apply, in part because they were trying to get money back from shareholders, not from intermediaries the shield was designed to protect.

A bankruptcy judge has given the green light for the sale of a Corpus Christi, Texas, plastics manufacturing plant owned by M&G USA Corp., a move that will allow for its completion, the Corpus Christi Caller Times reported. The sale of M&G's Corpus Christi plant was approved on March 28 by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan L. Shannon. The judge's order allows a newly formed joint venture — Corpus Christi Polymers — to purchase the still-under-construction plastics manufacturing plant, its desalination/boiler plant and certain M&G intellectual property for $1.125 billion. The price includes cash and "other capital contributions," according to a prior statement issued by Corpus Christi Polymers on March 21. The deal needed the court's approval before it could go forward.