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A bankruptcy judge blocked New York taxi mogul Evgeny “Gene” Freidman from abandoning 46 taxis outside the Citigroup tower in Queens after he threatened a very public surrender to the lender he has battled since 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Carla Craig yesterday told Freidman and his lawyers, who agreed to surrender the vehicles and their medallions in a dispute over a $34 million unpaid loan, to keep them securely in his possession until further notice. Earlier this week, Freidman said that he couldn’t refinance his debt to Citibank NA and told the judge he would surrender the medallions, which give drivers of each vehicle the right to pick up street hails in Manhattan’s lucrative central business district. The surrender marks a turning point for Freidman, who put dozens of his taxi companies in bankruptcy protection on July 22, 2015, to keep Citibank officials from taking possession of the 46 taxi medallions issued by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission and owed by his companies. Citibank officials said Freidman’s companies missed a monthly loan payment on Dec. 1, 2014.

Top Sports Authority executives are back with demands for up to $1.5 million in bonuses to wrap up the final stages of a bankruptcy that closed hundreds of stores and cost thousands of jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported today. U.S. Trustee Andrew Vara is back, too, with a protest similar to the objection that scuttled Sports Authority’s original bonus proposal. The defunct retailer is “prioritizing insider executives above all other parties in interest, including unsecured creditors and the thousands of employees who have already lost their jobs,” Vara said. The revised bonus program for the failed Englewood, Colo., retailer and the renewed objection from Vara set the stage for round two of a battle over bonuses for top insiders in bankruptcy. Earlier this month, Judge Mary Walrath refused to sign off on a bonus package that meant up to $2.85 million in enhanced pay for four top executives, whom Sports Authority declined to name.

Oil-field service company Key Energy Services Inc. intends to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection with a plan that would make private-equity firm Platinum Equity LLC its largest shareholder, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Under the plan, holders of senior notes, including Platinum, would own about 95 percent of the reorganized company’s common shares. Current equity holders would have about a 5 percent stake. Key Energy disclosed in June that it was in discussion with lenders about a potential bankruptcy filing. The company’s second-quarter revenue fell to $95 million from $197.5 million a year earlier. On Aug. 12, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Key Energy agreed to disgorge $5 million as part of a settlement over violations of U.S. foreign-bribery law. Key Energy expects its reorganization will reduce its debt from almost $1 billion to $250 million. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

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Core Media has been given an escape hatch from its agreements with Simon Fuller, the creator of “American Idol.” Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein granted a motion that will cause Fuller to lose out on a 10 percent profit share from Idol as well as “So You Think You Can Dance,” The Hollywood Reporter reported yesterday. The development comes amid an escalating feud between Fuller and Core Media, the parent company of 19 Entertainment that filed chapter 11 protection in April after Fox canceled the long-running singing competition show. Fuller has been hounding the company for several million dollars and has hinted at bringing fraud claims. In reaction to Fuller's demands, which came as Core was working with its lenders to restructure almost $400 million in debt, Core wanted an order pursuant to bankruptcy code authorizing the rejection of Fuller's consulting agreements. Back in 2010, when Fuller left 19 Entertainment, he signed a lucrative deal that entitled him to substantial payments in return for executive producer and consulting services.

Spanish renewable energy firm Abengoa SA has sold five of its Midwestern U.S. ethanol plants for $357 million as the company looks to stave off what would be Spain’s largest-ever corporate bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Green Plains Inc. of Omaha, Neb., which operates 14 plants and has an ethanol-marketing unit, is paying $200 million for Abengoa plants in Mount Vernon, Ind., and Madison, Ill., according to papers filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in St. Louis. Green Plains also topped Houston-based BioUrja Trading LLC, an ethanol-marketing firm that doesn’t have production operations, for Abengoa’s York, Neb., plant with a $37.4 million bid at bankruptcy auction Monday. An affiliate of plant operator KAAPA Ethanol LLC of Minden, Neb., is paying $115 million for Abengoa’s Ravenna, Neb., plant. And ICM Inc. is picking up Abengoa’s shuttered plant in Colwich, Kan., for $3.15 million.

A group of sexual abuse victims who suffered at the hands of clergy in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minn., have filed a counter-plan for the proposed settlement, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported today. The archdiocese’s plan, submitted to bankruptcy court in May, is “grossly underfunded and grossly deficient,” said attorney Jeff Anderson during a news conference Tuesday. Anderson is a St. Paul attorney representing hundreds of people claiming sexual abuse by priests. The plan submitted by the survivors, as the Creditors’ Committee in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, would require the archdiocese to pay $80 million to victims instead of the $13 million it proposed. Read more. 

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Aéropostale Inc.’s doors remain open as back-to-school shoppers hit the stores, but there is no guarantee the company will survive for long, the Wall Street Journal reported today. A planned auction of the massive store chain has been pushed back to Aug. 29 as a bankruptcy judge weighs what could be a company-ending decision for the international seller of apparel to young adults. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane is set to rule later this week on a dispute between Aéropostale and the private-equity firm that was at one time one of its largest backers, Sycamore Partners. Junior creditors and the company are allied in a campaign to save Aéropostale, avoiding the “loss of over 10,000 jobs, empty lease locations and disappointment for vendors,” creditor attorney Robert Feinstein said at a hearing yesterday in New York bankruptcy court. Aéropostale is pressing for a ruling that would rein in Sycamore’s power to determine the company’s fate. Sycamore contends liquidation, not a sale of the operating business at a bargain-basement price, is the best option for creditors.

The bankrupt operating unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp. asked a judge yesterday to extend a lawsuit shield for its parent company, which a financial advisor said is critical to making progress toward a settlement with holdout creditors, Reuters reported. Negotiations are advancing thanks to the prospect of more cash for creditors following the $4.4 billion sale of another Caesars affiliate last month and the possibility of financial contributions from Caesars' private equity sponsors, Brendan Hayes, managing director of Millstein & Co said at a hearing. But negotiations need to take place without the threat of judgments on bondholder litigation currently pending in New York and Delaware against the non-bankrupt Caesars parent, Hayes said. Parties in the long and litigious $18 billion bankruptcy met in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Chicago as Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc. requested a third halt to $11.4 billion in lawsuits by noteholders against its parent over bond guarantees. A current injunction expires on Aug. 29.

Gawker Media Group’s new owner, Univision Communications Inc., would pay Gawker’s founder $16,666 a month for the next two years in exchange for a promise not to work for the gossip site’s rivals, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Nick Denton would be paid about $400,000 by Univision, according to a noncompete pact filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The Spanish-language broadcaster last week won a bankruptcy auction for Gawker with a $135 million bid, and then said that it was shutting down the site. The company insisted on the noncompete agreement with Denton, who earned $500,000 a year at Gawker, as a condition of the sale.

Calvert Retail, a Delaware company that owns eight kitchenwares stores, could become the new owner of Chapel Hill’s (N.C.) struggling Southern Season as soon as today, the Charlotte (N.C.) News & Observer reported today. The company was the sole bidder at a bankruptcy sale on Friday morning with a $3.5 million bid. A bankruptcy judge approved the sale Friday afternoon and the deal is being expedited to close today. “We are very close to zero cash. We don’t have enough cash to operate next week if this doesn’t close,” said John Fioretti, the court approved chief restructuring officer for Southern Season. Southern Season was started in 1975 and eventually became a $30 million retail and mail order business and an anchor tenant at Chapel Hill’s University Place mall. However, it never recovered after the 2008 recession and was bought in 2011 by TC Capital Fund, which is led by Chapel Hill entrepreneur Clay Hamner.