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Bankrupt Brazilian airline Gol received U.S. court approval on Wednesday for a $1 billion loan, after resolving the concerns of a group of lenders that feared they would be sidelined by the new loan, Reuters reported. Gol had previously proposed borrowing $950 million in bankruptcy, but it allowed the objecting lenders to kick in an additional $50 million on the new loan and receive interest on that new debt, Gol's attorney Justin Cunningham said at a hearing in Manhattan. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn approved the loan at the hearing in Manhattan, saying he was pleased to see a compromise. "It's nice when more people want to put money in," Judge Glenn said. The previously objecting lenders, a group of investment funds that had loaned money to Gol in 2020, will not receive the same level of fees as the original group of lenders, who could receive up to $47.5 million in additional commitment fees and backstop fees under the loan agreement, according to court documents. Gol instead agreed to pay them $800,000 for attorneys' fees and costs related to the renegotiation of the loan. Gol filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States on Jan. 25. The airline had been suffering from long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel and has had difficulty sourcing sufficient Boeing 737 Max aircraft to meet a surge in post-pandemic demand for air travel, according to court documents. Judge Glenn previously approved a portion of the loan, allowing Gol to borrow up to $350 million at a court hearing in January.

Essence Magazine’s parent company is in talks to acquire Vice Media’s women’s lifestyle site Refinery29, the Wall Street Journal reported. The price being discussed couldn’t be learned but Essence would likely pay a fraction of the $400 million Vice paid in cash and stock when it bought Refinery29 in 2019. News of the discussions, which could still fall apart, comes just days after Vice’s largest shareholder, Fortress Investment Group, said it would stop publishing content on the company’s namesake site, Vice.com, and was laying off hundreds of staffers. Vice Media was once valued at $5.7 billion and was among the most promising digital-media ventures, but has struggled to stay afloat. Fortress, which took over Vice in bankruptcy last year, is now focusing on its remaining assets, which include its production studio, TV network and ad agency Virtue.

Cumulus Media is facing backlash from some of its lenders over a debt-exchange proposal that would push existing creditors down the repayment line if they don’t participate, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal, announced on Tuesday, calls for a debt swap at below-par prices. Non-participating creditors would also see collateral moved away from them — a sore spot for some debtholders because the value of the loan would diminish. A group of creditors holding secured debt retained Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and plan to bring in a financial adviser to evaluate the proposal. Bank of America Corp. is working with the company on the debt exchanges. Cumulus joins a long list of U.S. companies with distressed debt undertaking contentious maneuvers to reduce their debt load. Software firm GoTo Group Inc. recently reached a deal with a majority of its creditors that would extend its debt maturities and rework the pecking order for creditor payouts. Apex Tool Group also struck a deal with some of its lenders that would give the firm fresh capital while allowing a handful of creditors to jump ahead in the repayment line. The radio-broadcasting operator is asking creditors to swap its 6.75% first-lien notes into longer-dated, higher-coupon debt. The company is also looking to exchange its term loan for new debt, according to a press release. Its nearly $346 million first-lien bonds traded at 60.75 cents on Monday, according to Trace. Cumulus’ roughly $328
million first-lien loan due in 2026 is quoted at around 72.63 cents on the dollar, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Holders of each tranche of both the notes and the loan are being asked to swap at around 80 cents on the dollar.

Gemini Trust Co., the crypto exchange founded by twin entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, will return at least $1.1 billion to customers though the Genesis Global Capital bankruptcy as part of settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services, Bloomberg News reported. The New York-based firm will also pay a $37 million fine for various compliance failures to the New York Department of Financial Services, Superintendent Adrienne A. Harris said in a statement Wednesday. Gemini is returning the funds to customers who lost money through the Gemini Earn program that the exchange ran together with now-bankrupt lender Genesis Global. Gemini also agreed to contribute $40 million to Genesis’s bankruptcy for the benefit of Earn customers in coordination with the bankruptcy court. “Gemini failed to conduct due diligence on an unregulated third party, later accused of massive fraud, harming Earn customers who were suddenly unable to access their assets after Genesis Global Capital experienced a financial meltdown,” Harris said. “Today’s settlement is a win for Earn customers, who have a right to the assets they entrusted to Gemini.” The Earn program, which was launched in early 2021, let more than 200,000 Gemini users — including almost 30,000 New Yorkers — lend out their coins through Genesis for yield. Genesis stopped withdrawals in late 2022, and filed for bankruptcy in early 2023. Gemini failed to conduct ongoing due diligence into Genesis, or to maintain adequate reserves throughout the running of Earn, the department said.

Thrasio Holdings Inc. has filed for chapter 11 as part of a deal with lenders to provide it with fresh capital and get rid of about $495 million of debt, Bloomberg News reported. The company, a Amazon.com Inc. seller, initiated the process in New Jersey, according to a filing dated Feb. 28. It is seeking to pay employees’ wages, as well as suppliers, while the case is ongoing. “Thrasio is one of the largest third-party sellers on the Amazon marketplace, and with a strengthened balance sheet and new capital, we will be better equipped to support our brands,” Greg Greeley, chief executive officer of Thrasio, said in a statement. During the pandemic, investors pumped billions of dollars — mostly in debt — into startups rolling up popular brands sold on Amazon.com, betting on the online sales boom. But as people returned to their old consumption patterns, Amazon sales slowed, and the companies began to grapple with rising interest rates on their debt. In 2021 Thrasio borrowed $500 million from a syndicate of lenders including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Private Credit Group and BlackRock Inc.

A Texas bankruptcy judge declined to bring monetary sanctions against lawyers for Sorrento Therapeutics, ruling that a bank account and mailbox established to justify the company’s chapter 11 filing in Houston didn’t rise to the level of bankruptcy fraud, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Timothy Culberson, a Sorrento shareholder, earlier revealed that Sorrento’s lawyers at the firms Latham & Watkins and Jackson Walker had prepared a bankruptcy petition for the company’s subsidiary Scintilla Pharmaceuticals that relied on a bank account Sorrento wired $60,000 to three days before the filing and a mailbox established at a UPS store in a Houston suburb the day before the filing. Sorrento had used Scintilla’s Feb. 13, 2023, petition as a basis to make its own chapter 11 filing in Houston immediately after. The U.S. trustee for the Southern District of Texas, which serves as a bankruptcy watchdog on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department, presented evidence earlier this month showing that Scintilla had made representations to the California Secretary of State both before and after its bankruptcy filing that its principal address was in San Diego. Both the trustee and Culberson filed court papers this month demanding that the Sorrento and Scintilla cases be either dismissed or transferred out of state, alleging that the Scintilla petition falsely stated the company’s principal assets and place of business were in Texas. Culberson had separately alleged that the actions Latham and Jackson Walker had taken in preparing the filing amounted to bankruptcy fraud, seeking both firms to pay monetary damages.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s lawyer said Tuesday that a suggested 100-year prison sentence for the FTX founder by an arm of the court is “grotesque” and “barbaric” and at most a term of a few years behind bars is appropriate for cryptocurrency crimes that the California man still disputes, the Associated Press reported. In presentence arguments filed just minutes before a late Tuesday deadline in Manhattan federal court, attorney Marc Mukasey said a report by Probation officers improperly calculated federal sentencing guidelines to recommend a sentence just 10 years short of the maximum potential 110-year sentence. A spokesperson for prosecutors, who will respond in court papers in mid-March, declined comment. Mukasey noted, however, that prosecutors have agreed with the 100-year recommendation and say it was supported by trial evidence. On March 28, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan will sentence the man prosecutors say cheated investors and customers of at least $10 billion in businesses he controlled from 2017 through 2022.

The former chief executive of Firestar Diamond, a jewelry wholesaler accused of taking part in bank fraud allegedly orchestrated by Nirav Modi, transferred his interest in a multimillion-dollar New York residence to his wife days after his company filed for bankruptcy in 2018, the trustee responsible for liquidating Firestar said in a lawsuit seeking to undo the transfer, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Mihir Bhansali made the transfer to place his interest in the residence, which had been purchased for $7.1 million, “outside the reach of his present and future creditors,” Richard Levin, the trustee working to distribute Firestar’s remaining assets, said in a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York. It is the third lawsuit lodged by the Firestar trustee against Bhansali, whom Levin said participated in the Indian bank fraud allegedly orchestrated by jewelry magnate Modi. Levin said in his new lawsuit that the residence in New York was bought partly with cash from the alleged Modi scheme. Levin said that Modi was found living in London in 2019 and arrested. In 2021, after a trial, the U.K. granted India’s request to extradite him, but Modi appealed the extradition ruling, and he remains in prison in London, Levin said.

Crypto lender Genesis Global on Monday kicked off a multi-day court hearing on its proposal to repay customers in bankruptcy, asking a U.S. bankruptcy judge to overrule its parent company Digital Currency Group's objections to its chapter 11 plan, Reuters reported. Equity owners are last in line to be repaid in bankruptcy, and DCG is trying to cut in line ahead of customers who loaned their cryptocurrency to Genesis, Genesis attorney Sean O'Neal said at a court hearing in White Plains, N.Y. "Our clients lent us these assets, and we're trying to give them back," O'Neal told U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane. "DCG should not be able to come in and take a cut." DCG is trying to stop Genesis' bankruptcy plan from being confirmed, arguing that it cuts off any chance of recovery to equity holders. The heart of their dispute centers on a fundamental question: When is a bankruptcy creditor paid "in full?" Genesis is seeking approval of a bankruptcy plan that would repay customers in bitcoin, Ether, or U.S. dollars, depending on the type of assets they had on deposit with Genesis when it filed for chapter 11 in January 2023. Genesis has estimated that its customers will receive up to 77% of the value of their deposits under its plan. Genesis said that its customers are not being fully repaid because the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have risen since it filed for bankruptcy, and it cannot repay the full current value of customers' crypto deposits.

Trucking, logistics and factoring companies are collectively owed millions of dollars after a California-based freight forwarder filed for bankruptcy liquidation, FreightWaves reported. Boateng Logistics, headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif., filed its petition Friday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California. In its filing, Boateng Logistics listed its assets as up to $50,000 and its liabilities as between $1 million and $10 million. The company stated that it has up to 99 creditors and maintains that no funds will be available for unsecured creditors once it pays administrative fees. The largest unsecured creditor is the U.S. Small Business Administration, which is owed $750,000 for a loan the company received through the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program in 2020. While funds received through the Paycheck Protection Program are forgivable, the disaster relief funds loans must be repaid.