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A financial adviser to NII Holdings' creditors testified yesterday that the bankrupt wireless operator's $4.35 billion restructuring plan is good for all creditors, including those who oppose it, Reuters reported yesterday. Andrew Scruton of FTI Consulting took the stand on the fifth day of a trial over a plan by NII, which operates the Nextel brand in Brazil, to hand control of the company to Aurelius Capital Management and other holders of $4.35 billion in debt. The plan, which needs the approval of Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, is supported by most creditors, but opposed by a bondholder faction known as the CapCo group. It alleges that Aurelius and other powerful holders designed the plan themselves as a sweetheart deal, costing CapCo $150 million, more than a third of its total payout. Scruton, who advised NII's unsecured creditors' committee, said that the deal will benefit the CapCo group.

Comcast Corp. was accused of sabotaging a Houston television network it co-owned with baseball’s Astros and basketball’s Rockets so it could acquire the teams’ broadcast rights on the cheap, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The professional sports teams sued Comcast in a Texas bankruptcy court yesterday claiming that the largest U.S. cable operator sought to “financially cripple” the network to drive down its value and make it ripe for a low-cost acquisition. “Comcast did everything in its power to financially impair” the Houston Regional Sports Network so it could acquire broadcast rights to Astros and Rockets games “at a significant discount,” the teams said in the complaint. Comcast and its units deny the claims. 

Walter Energy Inc. will miss an interest payment to junior noteholders due in four days as it negotiates with creditors to restructure its debt, Bloomberg News reported today. The unprofitable coal producer will enter into a 30-day grace period starting June 15 on $19 million due to holders of its $388 million 9.875 percent unsecured note maturing in December 2020, the company said yesterday. Walter’s plan to skip the coupon payment for now comes as it continues negotiations on a restructuring of its $3.1 billion debt load. 

Some of the world’s biggest oil companies are chipping in to repay victims of a deadly train derailment, but unless a bankruptcy judge says otherwise, the amounts they’re paying will remain secret, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Insurers, oil companies and others will together pay several hundred million dollars to compensate those affected by the 2013 derailment of a crude oil-carrying train in Canada. After the crash, the train operator filed for bankruptcy and began pursuing litigation in an effort to compensate those who were injured, lost their lives or had their businesses damaged when the runaway train crashed into a small Quebec town and exploded. The terms of the settlement aim to shield the specific dollar amount that companies like Royal Dutch Shell PLC , Marathon Oil Corp., ConocoPhillips and Irving Oil Ltd. would each pitch in to what has grown to become a $345 million fund. A Justice Department watchdog urged a bankruptcy judge to expose the dollar amounts, arguing that efforts to keep them secret “violate the strong public policy in favor of public access to documents filed with the bankruptcy court.” The watchdog said that other courts have rejected the argument that making the figures public will hurt the companies’ chances in future litigation. The bankruptcy judge will consider making other companies’ contributions public at a June 23 hearing.

NextEra Energy Inc. has emerged as the frontrunner in an auction for bankrupt Energy Future Holdings Corp.’s Oncor Electric Delivery Co., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Energy Future could name NextEra the stalking-horse bidder for its 80 percent stake in Oncor, which is the biggest owner and operator of power lines in Texas, in the next few weeks. Oncor is worth more than $10 billion, its chief executive said in April. Oncor is the crown jewel of Dallas-based Energy Future, which filed for chapter 11 protection last April after taking on too much debt in a $48 billion leveraged buyout, the largest on record. Oncor is considered a prize because Texas is adding electricity customers and state regulators support power line investments. A squabble among creditors over the fate of Oncor derailed Energy Future’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy in less than a year. “It’s a great regulated franchise and has good growth,” Kit Konolige, a utility analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, said yesterday. “NextEra has already done some transmission in Texas and they feel like they have some institutional knowledge in the state.”

Nearly seven years after collapsing, Lehman Brothers still has $15 billion in assets and $68 billion in claims to resolve, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The failed investment bank said in a filing that it is now focusing its attention on litigation and contested claims that have yet to be settled. "The wind-down is entering a phase during which increasingly more court resources will be required to advance the process and provide final resolution and distributions to creditors," Lehman said in its annual "state of the estate" filing made with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York on Tuesday.

Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP former controller told a jury yesterday that years before the law firm collapsed, Dewey’s accounting department scrambled to avoid trouble with its banks by making the firm’s income appear higher than it was, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In January 2009, with just days to find a way to boost 2008 income by $25 million, members of the department used fraudulent adjustments to get the numbers where they wanted them, former controller Thomas Mullikin said during the third week of a criminal trial of Dewey’s three top leaders, accused of conspiring to defraud the firm’s banks and creditors. Mullikin is the first of seven cooperating witnesses to take the stand for the Manhattan district attorney’s office in what is expected to be a six-month-long trial. He pleaded guilty to a scheme to defraud in the first degree tied to his actions in Dewey’s accounting department, and prosecutors will recommend Mullikin receive five months in a Manhattan detention center.

A Luxembourg bank bracing to recover a fraction of nearly $50 million in bonds it bought from the bankrupt city of San Bernardino, Calif., is appealing the dismissal of a lawsuit that could have enabled the bank to recover more money, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. With its appeal on Monday, bank officials are trying to revive a lawsuit, which was dismissed last month by Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Jury, that could have forced the city to repay the bank's bonds in full. San Bernardino leaders trying to fix the city's financial problems have proposed to repay to the bank, Erste Europaische Pfandbrief-und Kommunalkreditbank AG, about 1 percent on roughly $48 million in bonds.

Boomerang Tube LLC, a maker of pipes and tubes for oil and natural gas companies, filed for chapter 11 protection yesterday, becoming the latest victim of the slide in oil prices, Reuters reported yesterday. The proposed restructuring will convert about $214 million of the company's debt under its term loan into equity, Boomerang Tube said in its filing. The reorganized company will also issue $55 million in new debt, the filing said. St. Louis, Missouri-based Boomerang Tube, which was bought by Access Tubulars LLC in 2008, said that it had total assets of about $299 million and total liabilities of about $461 million, as of March 31.

San Antonio-based Primera Energy has filed for chapter 11 protection amid a lawsuit filed by unhappy investors in state district court, the San Antonio Business Journal reported yesterday. Court filings show that the oil exploration and production company owes $1 million to $10 million to 1,000 to 5,000 creditors. The bankruptcy filing came one day after Primera's CEO Brian Alfaro lost a legal battle in Bexar County's 288th State District Court, where at least 20 people filed a lawsuit alleging fraud and deceptive trade practices. Judge Antonia Arteaga issued an order last Wednesday putting Primera Energy into a receivership, in which a neutral third-party lawyer would oversee the company and its activities. Investors claimed in the lawsuit that Alfaro fraudulently raised $40 million for unprofitable oil well projects in McMullen and Gonzales counties and that Alfaro maintained a "lavish lifestyle" by skimming 10 percent of their money for himself. The investors allege in the filing that Alfaro put 60 percent of their money in his general accounts for Primera Energy, Alfaro Oil & Gas and Alfaro Energy while the remaining 30 percent actually went to the well projects.