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Senior creditors of Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s bankrupt operating unit are threatening to abandon a framework agreement and propose their own formal restructuring plan as soon as Monday, Reuters reported yesterday. Until now, senior lenders and bondholders have been the only creditors to back a framework agreement to slash some $10 billion of debt from Caesars' operating unit, which filed for bankruptcy with $18 billion of debt in January 2015. But since that deal was revised in October, they say that there has been "a very substantial decline in the value of the debt and equity securities proposed to be provided" to them, according to a bankruptcy court filing yesterday.

Craig Heller, an early leader of loft development in downtown St. Louis, has filed for bankruptcy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported today. Heller and his wife, Amy, filed a chapter 7 petition in which they reported assets of between $500,001 and $1 million and liabilities of between $10 million and $50 million. In the petition filed Monday in St. Louis, Heller estimated that after exempt property is excluded and administrative costs are paid, no funds will remain to pay unsecured creditors. In the 1990s, his Loftworks firm began converting old downtown office buildings in St. Louis into lofts. Among creditors listed in the Hellers’ bankruptcy petition are Enterprise Bank & Trust, the city of St. Louis and former partners in FarmWorks, a failed urban agriculture project north of downtown.

Wall Street financier Lynn Tilton on Friday said that her firm Patriarch Partners LLC will become a "family office" and will step down as collateral manager of three investment pools that helped fund her portfolio of troubled companies, Reuters reported. The decision follows years of legal battles with the bond insurer MBIA Inc. It also followed Patriarch's bid on Nov. 22 to put one of the pools, a collateralized loan obligation called Zohar I, into involuntary bankruptcy to keep MBIA from seizing its assets. That effort came two days after the CLO defaulted on some notes, forcing MBIA to make a $149 million payment. Tilton and Patriarch will withdraw their opposition to MBIA's bid to dismiss the involuntary bankruptcy petition.

American Apparel said on Friday that it has emerged from chapter 11 proceedings as a private company after implementing a reorganization plan, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The emergence ends a painful period for the Los Angeles-based clothing manufacturer and retail chain, which had to grapple with shrinking sales, an outsize store footprint as well as sexual harassment litigation tied to its former CEO and founder Dov Charney. The reorganization plan, which was unanimously approved by creditors, swapped $230 million in debt for equity with bondholders and provided for $40 million of exit capital for the company and a commitment for a $40 million asset-backed loan, American Apparel said. The company noted that among the benefits of the plan, interest expense would decrease by $20 million.

Osage Exploration and Development Inc. filed for chapter 11 protection on Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Oklahoma City with plans to sell its assets through a court-overseen auction process, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The company blamed its woes on the "substantial drop" in oil and natural gas prices in recent months, according to court papers. "Based on the debtor's current capital structure, liquidity constraints, and inability to raise new capital, it has become necessary for the debtor to seek chapter 11," Kim Bradford, president of Osage, said in court papers. The cash-strapped company said that it was unable to afford to continue developing its oil and gas reserves or to pay its operational expenses and debt obligations. It suspended its operations in the field, and the last well that it drilled, completed and brought online was in January. Osage owes about $26 million to Apollo Global Management LLC, which in 2012 issued bonds to the company. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

Get a better understanding of what happens when an oil, gas or other natural resources company goes bankrupt with ABI’s When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy. 

KaloBios Pharmaceuticals, the struggling drug company Martin Shkreli took over in November, may survive bankruptcy and its brush with Shkreli, who was ousted as chief executive after his arrest on securities fraud charges, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein rejected a request to have a trustee appointed to oversee KaloBios’s affairs, after warnings that displacing the leadership team that came on board after Shkreli left would upset the prospective deal. Revived hope of a deal for a potentially lucrative drug, benznidazole, could pull KaloBios out of chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company’s lawyers told Judge Silverstein at a hearing yesterday. KaloBios is lining up financing to move ahead on a restructuring built around benznidazole, a treatment for Chagas' disease. The affliction is on an FDA list of ailments that could earn a ticket for fast-track regulatory treatment known as a priority review voucher. Priority review vouchers have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, as Shkreli told investors in December, when he was trumpeting the commercial outlook for benznidazole.

Lawyers trying to sell California’s Metropolitan Automotive Warehouse Inc., which fell into bankruptcy after saying that it lost money expanding its online auto parts sales, want a bankruptcy judge to set a March 4 bid deadline for potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. Metropolitan Automotive Warehouse officials told Judge Wayne E. Johnson in court papers that several buyers are interested in purchasing the Los Angeles-area company out of bankruptcy at an auction. The company, combined with affiliate Star Auto Parts Inc., employs about 1,000 people. Metropolitan Automotive Warehouse officials didn’t say how much buyers were offering to pay but proposed to reveal the value of the auction’s opening bid by Feb. 12. One offer is expected to come from New York-based Parts Authority Inc., which called itself one of the largest distributors of automotive and truck parts on the East Coast in a document filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside, Calif.

The city of San Bernardino, Calif., which has been stuck in bankruptcy for more than three years, has reached a repayment deal with its fiercest courtroom foe: a European bank owed about $52 million worth of municipal bonds, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. San Bernardino lawyers told Judge Meredith Jury that they have reached a tentative settlement with the bondholder but refused to say how much money the 200,000-resident city offered to repay. Under an earlier proposal, the Luxembourg bank that owns the bonds would get $655,000 plus interest. The deal still needs approval from bank officials and San Bernardino city councilors, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside, Calif. The potential deal would silence one of the last remaining major critics of the city's turnaround strategy, making it easier for the city to get out of the bankruptcy case it filed in 2012. Bank lawyers have objected to the city's plan, saying that the city should raise taxes instead of forcing steep cuts on debt holders.

Concert producer SFX Entertainment Inc. can begin spending its $115 million bankruptcy loan since receiving an initial approval from a bankruptcy judge yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The permission from Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath gives SFX access to an $80 million chunk of that loan, being provided by junior bondholders that have worked with SFX to construct the terms of a restructuring agreement. SFX will return to court in several weeks to request a final signoff on the loan and a number of other motions approved on an interim basis Wednesday, including permission to pay utility bills as well as critical vendors and employees. The bankruptcy loan will be used to pay off senior lenders and provides $23 million to cover operational expenses.

Creditors of Abengoa Bioenergy of Nebraska LLC asked a federal judge to put the U.S. affiliate of troubled Spanish renewable energy group Abengoa into bankruptcy because it owes them more than $4 million for grain, Reuters reported yesterday. The involuntary bankruptcy petition comes as demand for U.S. biofuels has dropped as crude oil prices have plunged. The petition for a chapter 7 liquidation of Abengoa Bioenergy of Nebraska, which operates a bioethanol plant in that Midwestern state, was filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of Nebraska late on Monday. The company owes $4.07 million to Gavilon Grain LLC, the Farmers Cooperative Association and The Andersons Inc., for grain, court documents showed.