%1

Colorado-based debt collector SquareTwo Financial Corp. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, Reuters reported yesterday. SquareTwo reached an agreement with Resurgent Holdings LLC to take ownership of the debt collector's portfolio of assets, with Resurgent agreeing to invest $405 million, according to the filing. SquareTwo Chief Operating Officer J.B. Richardson said the proceeds from the agreement would result in a final purchase price of $264 million in exchange for 100 percent of the equity of the reorganized company. On completion of the transaction, SquareTwo will close its operations in the U.S., with the closing expected to be completed by the end of 2017. SquareTwo said its Canadian operations would continue under Resurgent's ownership.

A deal between HHGregg Inc. and a mystery bidder has fallen apart, leaving the bankrupt appliance retailer without a floor bid for its proposed April auction, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The Indianapolis-based retailer said on Thursday that it has terminated the “nonbinding term sheet with an anonymous party,” which contemplated a sale for all of its of its assets. HHGregg, which sought bankruptcy protection on March 6, said in court papers it had signed a term sheet with an anonymous interested party, but had yet to reach an asset purchase agreement. While the buyer had yet to be named, the company considered it to be a critical vendor to HHGregg.

A Houston-based plastic recycling company, Covenant Plastics Inc., has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Houston, the Houston Business Journal reported today. Covenant buys, sells and recycles polymers and resins in various forms, according to the company's website. It has filed with the bankruptcy court of the Southern District of Texas. The company is bringing $4.12 million in debt to the bankruptcy proceedings, along with $3.02 million in assets, according to court documents. Its revenues, though, have been growing in the past two years — it reported $2 million in gross revenue in 2015, while 2016 saw $2.52 million, according to the filing.

Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP won an auction for a natural gas gathering and processing system out of a bankruptcy auction, the Houston Business Journal reported today. Enterprise is buying the system with a bid of $189 million from Dallas-based Azure Midstream Partners LP, which filed for bankruptcy at the end of January, according to the statement. When it filed, Azure reported $179 million in debts, according to court filings. The deal is expected to close as soon as April 2017, and includes 960 miles of natural gas gathering pipelines, three processing facilities that represent 210 million cubic feet of processing capacity per day, and two natural gas liquids pipelines that can move up to 10,000 barrels per day each. Read more. 

Get a better understanding of what happens when an oil, gas or other natural resources company goes bankrupt. Order your copy of ABI's revised and expanded When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy, Second Edition. 

Peabody Energy Corp., the world's largest private sector coal producer, said yesterday that it expects to exit its chapter 11 protection in early April after a U.S. judge said he would approve its plan to slash over $5 billion of debt, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Barry Schermer said that he was ready to sign an order to approve Peabody's bankruptcy emergence once language regarding a late settlement of certain U.S. Department of Justice complaints had been finalized. The reorganization plan, which will repay secured lenders in full, received overwhelming support from its creditors. Peabody plans to re-list on the stock market, coinciding with increased demand from Asia and anticipation of eased regulation under U.S. President Donald Trump that has fueled investor enthusiasm for coal. Read more. 

The featured keynote at ABI's 2017 Annual Spring Meeting will be Spencer Abraham, former U.S. Senator and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. Additionally, a panel at the Annual Spring Meeting will be discussing legal and business developments in E&P cases. Click here to register! 

A federal judge has rejected PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP's bid to sharply restrict how the bankruptcy plan administrator for Jon Corzine's defunct brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd pursues its $3 billion malpractice case against the auditor, Reuters reported yesterday. Ruling eight days after the trial began, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan refused to force the administrator, which is seeking money for MF Global creditors, to stick to what PwC called its original theory of why MF Global went bankrupt on Oct. 31, 2011. PwC said that the administrator has in three years of litigation blamed the bankruptcy on a $6.3 billion European sovereign debt wager that the futures and commodities brokerage would not have made but for its negligent accounting advice. But PwC said that it was blindsided when the administrator at trial began blaming confusion and a lack of trust among customers, investors and lenders in MF Global's financial statements, which in turn were caused by PwC's advice. The auditor sought to exclude all evidence supporting that theory, including testimony from Corzine, or get a mistrial. But the judge said the administrator had blamed PwC before for the loss of confidence in MF Global, including during its lawyer's March 7 opening statement.

The president and co-owner of Bartolotta Fireworks has sought personal bankruptcy protection, and the company is becoming part of Wolverine Fireworks, the Milwaukee Journal reported today. Third-generation, family-owned Bartolotta Fireworks does hundreds of events a year in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the Upper Midwest. The business was started in 1977, but traces its roots to the 1930s when founder Sam Bartolotta developed a passion for pyrotechnics. In a chapter 7 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Madison, Wis., Jeffrey and Donna Bartolotta said that they had $506,377 in assets and $3,697,010 in liabilities. Jeffrey is president of the fireworks company. He and his wife, Donna, own a third of it, according to court records.

Sungevity, a one-time high flyer in the solar industry, has eliminated hundreds of jobs, filed for bankruptcy yesterday and arranged a sale of all of its assets to an investment group, the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News reported today. The green energy company filed for a voluntary chapter 11 proceeding in the bankruptcy court in Delaware. Oakland (Calif.)-based Sungevity also has entered into an asset purchase agreement with a group of investors led by Northern Pacific Group, a Minnesota-based private equity firm. If approved by the bankruptcy court, Northern Pacific would obtain essentially all of the assets of Sungevity. Last week, Sungevity eliminated about 350 jobs, according to a source with knowledge of the company’s operations.

A judge has approved Chaparral Energy Inc.'s plan to exit bankruptcy, wiping out $1.2 billion in debt from the Oklahoma City-based company, the Tulsa (Okla.) World reported today. Chaparral, a company of nearly 350 employees, expects to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of March, the company said yesterday. Under the plan, Chaparral's unsecured bondholders and general unsecured creditors will own all of the company's ownership interest, subject to some dilution. "Thanks to the hard work of everyone involved with this process, Chaparral will emerge from chapter 11 within the next few weeks as one of the most financially stable oil and gas companies of its size in the industry," CEO K. Earl Reynolds said. Read more. 

The featured keynote at ABI's 2017 Annual Spring Meeting will be Spencer Abraham, former U.S. Senator and former U.S. Secretary of Energy. Additionally, a panel at the Annual Spring Meeting will be discussing legal and business developments in E&P cases. Click here to register! 

Get a better understanding of what happens when an oil, gas or other natural resources company goes bankrupt. Order your copy of ABI's revised and expanded When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy, Second Edition. 

The Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development intends to try to recover money Aquion Energy Inc. owes it, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported on Saturday. Aquion, a once-promising Pittsburgh battery company with a manufacturing facility in Westmoreland County, Pa., filed for bankruptcy last week and lists the state as its top creditor. “DCED is prepared to take whatever steps are necessary and legal under the Bankruptcy Code to recover our loans,” spokeswoman Heidi Havens said. “Upon notification that the bankruptcy petition was filed, DCED commenced a comprehensive review of the project to include an evaluation of collateral.” The loans were secured by collateral, but Havens would not say what that collateral was. Aquion was current on all of its loan payments and made payments as recently as last week. Havens would not say how much was still owed. Aquion announced March 8 it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it failed to raise enough money to keep it running.