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Equity investors in Breitburn Energy Partners LP can receive representation on an official committee, a bankruptcy court said on Friday, giving investors in the bankrupt oil and gas company a voice in restructuring negotiations, Reuters reported. Breitburn, based in Los Angeles, filed for chapter 11 protection in May, one of more than 100 energy companies that have sought court protection from creditors in the worst energy price crash in a generation. The public unit holders of the master limited partnership began fighting for an official place in court soon after, saying that they could end up owing taxes if the company canceled some of its roughly $3.1 billion in debt in a reorganization. "(The) court concludes that ... equity has carried its burden that Breitburn does not appear to be hopelessly insolvent," Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein of the Southern District of New York said. Judge Bernstein said that the committee should focus on Breitburn's plan of reorganization, which has not been filed, and its solvency. The committee should also look into the potential tax hit the equity holders face, he said. 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. 

The U.S. government's pension insurer said yesterday that it opposed a deal to divvy up $7.3 billion left from the liquidation of Nortel Networks, potentially complicating efforts to end a seven-year battle over the cash, Reuters reported. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) said that it did not support an agreement reached on Wednesday because it would not receive the entire $708 million it says it is owed. The sale of Nortel's businesses raised billions of dollars, and Wednesday's agreement divided that cash among former Nortel businesses in Canada, the United States and Europe, ending years of cross-border court fights. The PBGC was not a party to the settlement, which is subject to court approval in the United States, Canada and other countries. The agency's claim stems from the termination of Nortel's underfunded pension plan in 2009, which at the time had 22,000 participants.

Goodrich Petroleum Corp., one of the first mid-sized drillers to file for bankruptcy this year, has successfully completed its chapter 11 reorganization plan and has formally emerged from bankruptcy, FuelFix.com reported yesterday. The Houston-based drilling company was able to negotiate with its creditors to reduce its debts and costs and retain its assets. The company gets $40 million in new capital through second lien notes due in 2019. Half of that money will pay down outstanding debt and the other half will be used to fund the company’s drilling program in the Haynesville Shale, according to a company statement. 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. 

Former telecommunications equipment company Nortel Networks Ltd. reached an agreement with their various business units yesterday to divvy up the $7.3 billion raised from liquidating the failed company, paving the way for pensioners and creditors to get paid after a seven-year wait, Reuters reported. Ontario-based Nortel stumbled from ranking among the world's most valuable companies during the 1990s Internet bubble to bankruptcy in 2009 and liquidation. The cash at the center of the dispute was raised from the sale of Nortel's global businesses, including patents sold in 2011 for $4.5 billion to a group of technology firms led by Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp.  Under the agreement, Nortel's former U.S. business unit would receive 24 percent or $1.8 billion of the cash, with Nortel estates in Canada and Europe receiving 57 percent and 18 percent respectively, the former company said in a court filing.

Puerto Rico bondholders have reason to be optimistic about overturning the island's debt payment moratorium in court, based on rulings by the judge handling most of the litigation, Bond Buyer reported today. "If you're reading tea leaves there seems to be an indication that the court may not agree with the moratorium," said James Spiotto, managing director at Chapman Strategic Advisors. Nearly all the Puerto Rico debt cases are being heard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. The court is assigning all the cases to Judge Francisco Besosa, who is currently handling at least 11 of them. Judge Besosa issued a ruling last week that opens the door to declaring Puerto Rico's moratorium unconstitutional, Puerto Rico attorney John Mudd said. Read more. 

For more news and analysis of Puerto Rico's debt crisis, be sure to visit ABI's "Puerto Rico in Distress" webpage. 

Gawker Media LLC has asked the judge overseeing the company’s bankruptcy to authorize a probe into the relationship between billionaire Peter Thiel and the lawyer representing former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan as well as several of the media group’s other creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In a filing yesterday in bankruptcy court in Manhattan, Gawker’s lawyers said that they believed that Thiel may have been involved in financing as many as eight separate lawsuits that the bankruptcy process is seeking to settle. Thiel, who was outed as gay in 2007 by a Gawker site, has acknowledged bankrolling a legal campaign against Gawker, including the invasion-of-privacy lawsuit brought by the former wrestler, whose real name is Terry Bollea. A Florida jury awarded Bollea damages of $140 million.

The bankruptcy trustee sifting through the wreckage left when the ITT Technical Institute chain of schools collapsed says the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other government agencies are getting in her way, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Deborah Caruso, the trustee, wants the CFPB sidelined by court order, along with the Securities and Exchange Commission and attorneys general for Massachusetts and New Mexico, as well as others that sued the troubled for-profit educational company before it filed for bankruptcy last month. On Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Indianapolis, Judge James Carr set the matter for a hearing Nov. 2. Caruso is asking for an injunction barring government agencies from continuing their legal march on ITT Tech. Additionally, she wants a halt to lawsuits aimed at the company’s former executives.

General Motors Co. is asking a judge to halt a litigation battle with bankrupt auto-parts supplier Clark-Cutler-McDermott Co., the Wall Street Journal reported today. In recent court filings, GM seeks the dismissal of CCM’s lawsuit accusing the auto maker of lying in pricing negotiations and tricking CCM into entering a contract that saddled the Massachusetts company with debt in the months leading up to its bankruptcy filing. Auto-parts manufacturer CCM filed for chapter 11 protection on July 7, shutting down several weeks later. The 115-year-old company — a GM “Supplier of the Year” four times in the last seven years — blamed its filing on a money-losing contract with GM, which accounted for about 80 percent of CCM’s business.

Warring national units of defunct Nortel Networks Corp. have failed to reach a deal on how to divide $7.3 billion raised in the bankruptcy liquidation of the company, a fallen icon of the Canadian technology scene, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The money has been tied up for years in court fights, which are set to continue in a federal appeals court in Philadelphia. Talks continue, according to a letter filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, but efforts to settle the litigation have so far not panned out. Nortel U.S. is preparing once again to go to court against the Canadian parent company and European creditors, chiefly British pensioners, according to the letter, filed on Friday by one of Nortel U.S.’s lawyers Derek Abbott. The federal appeals court in the U.S. is being asked to overturn a bankruptcy judge’s decision on dividing the money on the grounds it is outside the bounds of the law. Nortel’s U.S. lawyers on Friday set out a schedule of briefing on the appeal, but left the dates blank, saying that they would like to take another month to try to reach agreement and end the litigation.

The fate of the website embroiled in a continuing legal battle with retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan remains unclear, according to a lawyer for Gawker Media, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The site, gawker.com, wasn’t included in last month’s sale of most of Gawker’s other assets to an arm of Univision Communications Inc. It remains a potentially valuable asset to be sold or otherwise monetized, the lawyer, Gregg Galardi, said Thursday during a bankruptcy court hearing in Manhattan. Gawker Media and founder Nick Denton have been dogged by a $130 million invasion-of-privacy judgment owed to the former wrestler, whose real name is Terry Bollea, stemming from a sex tape the site published in 2012. In March, a Florida jury awarded a total of $140 million in damages to Bollea. Denton, who is jointly liable for most of the $130 million award, is personally liable for an additional $10 million, court papers show. The mammoth judgment, which Gawker and Denton have vowed to appeal, forced both to seek chapter 11 protection earlier this year.