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Naples, Fla.-based Allen Systems Group Inc. (ASG) has quietly and swiftly emerged from chapter 11 bankruptcy, the Naples Daily News reported today. The multimillion-dollar software company has completed its financial restructuring, slashing its debt by more than 60 percent. It has emerged from bankruptcy with new capital and new owners that include affiliates of KKR Credit Advisors, and GSO Capital Partners LP, the credit arm of Blackstone Group LP. ASG's exit from bankruptcy comes a little over two months after its chapter 11 filing in Delaware, made in February. The filing followed the resignation of the company's founder, CEO and chairman, Arthur Allen Jr., who left the company in December.

Texas electricity giant Energy Future Holdings Corp. goes to court today to set a schedule for consideration of its chapter 11 exit plan and related proceedings, including for its 80 percent stake in its prized asset, Oncor, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. A cash-producing transmissions business that is not involved in the bankruptcy, Oncor is the focus of attention as Energy Future tries to work through its $42 billion debt load. The company wants to put the Oncor stake on the bankruptcy auction block while at the same time bargaining with creditors about an in-bankruptcy conversion to a real estate investment trust and takeover.

The parent of First Bank and Trust Co. of Illinois filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday with a plan to restructure more than $50 million in debt, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Northwest Bancorporation of Illinois Inc. said in court filings that it has a pre-packaged reorganization plan in place with support of both management and the Hershenhorn family, who owns more than 90 percent of Northwest through hybrid securities that have elements of both equity and debt. First Bank and Trust, a community bank with one branch in Palatine, Ill., isn't part of the bankruptcy and will continue operating normally, Northwest President Alan Reasoner said in an affidavit accompanying the company's filing.

Weak energy prices have forced bankrupt oil-and-gas company Endeavour International Corp. to abandon a deal with bondholders to cut its debt by $568 million and instead seek buyers for its U.S. assets, Reuters reported yesterday. The Houston-based company filed for bankruptcy in October with a plan that would have given stock and notes in the reorganized company to creditors, slashing its $1.2 billion in debt. Existing stock would have been canceled. That plan was negotiated in the months leading up to the bankruptcy filing, when oil prices were 50 percent above current levels. Endeavour said that if energy prices did not rebound and the company emerged from bankruptcy, a unit of the company would be in default by October and soon running out of cash, according to court papers filed on Wednesday. Endeavour, which mainly owns resource assets in the UK's North Sea, said that it now plans to seek bidders for its U.S. assets, which make up 18 percent of its total production and proven reserves. Read more.

For more on financial distress and bankruptcy of oil and gas companies, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy. 

A Minneapolis hedge fund is defending its right to buy the assets of Texas oil company WBH Energy LP at a bankruptcy auction by use of a credit bid against the protests of other creditors that want to challenge its claims on the assets, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Lawyers for Castlelake LP said in a court filing on Tuesday that the hedge fund has the right to bid the full value of its secured claim against WBH Energy at a bankruptcy auction scheduled for August. Castlelake, which invests in troubled companies and distressed debt, has agreed to serve as the stalking-horse bidder at the auction with a $25 million offer.

Kitchen product maker EveryWare Global Inc. won final court approval on Tuesday to tap a $40 million bankruptcy loan as it works to implement a restructuring plan that will cut $250 in debt from its balance sheet, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The approval from Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein comes after no objections were filed to the terms of the bankruptcy financing. EveryWare has been on the fast track in its bankruptcy case since filing for chapter 11 on April 7 with a pre-negotiated deal with creditors already in hand. In addition to the $40 million bankruptcy loan from existing senior lenders, EveryWare has access to a $60 million revolving credit line from Wells Fargo & Co. EveryWare, which makes Anchor Hocking and Oneida bakeware, stemware and other products, plans to turn over 96 percent of equity in a restructured company to term-loan lenders owed $248.7 million. The remaining 4 percent of equity will go to current shareholders in exchange for their support of the restructuring.

Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar allowed the operating unit of Caesars Entertainment Corp. to control its bankruptcy for another month, as creditors try to reach common ground with a court-appointed investigator probing the company's pre-bankruptcy dealings, Reuters reported yesterday. Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., the largest U.S. casino operator, went bankrupt in January with $18 billion in debt. An independent examiner has been tapped to investigate whether the company's equity owners, which include Apollo Global Management LLC and TPG Capital LP, illegally transferred key assets out of creditors' reach before the bankruptcy filing. Caesars had asked to extend its exclusive right to propose a restructuring plan until Nov. 15 from May 15, a request opposed by creditors, including first-lien noteholders. Judge Goldgar extended exclusivity only until May 27, the date of Caesars' next omnibus hearing.

A Chicago bankruptcy judge approved Caesars Entertainment’s plans to dismantle the former casino at the shuttered Harrah's complex in Mississippi's Tunica County, the Associated Press reported today. While Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar authorized the dismantling on March 30, it is unclear when Caesars will begin demolition or how long it will take. Alicia Draper, a permit clerk with the Tunica County Planning Commission, said yesterday that Caesars has yet to seek a required permit. Las Vegas-based Caesars closed Harrah's in June, eliminating about 1,000 jobs at the sprawling resort that opened in 1996 as Grand Casino Tunica. Demolition was opposed by the Clarksdale-based Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board. The board collects $3.65 million yearly from a port facility lease for the barges docked in Buck Lake, an oxbow lake of the Mississippi River about 30 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. Bankruptcy filings listed the board as Caesars' seventh-largest unsecured creditor, with $10.5 million due on a lease running through 2017. Caesars has paid some of that money since it filed for chapter 11 reorganization in January.

Corinthian Colleges Inc. on Sunday said that it is ending operations and closing its remaining 28 campuses, affecting about 16,000 students, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The troubled operator of for-profit colleges, which has been winding down its operations, said efforts to sell the campuses or arrange teach-out partnerships with other institutions had failed, "largely as a result of federal and state regulators seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions on buyers and teach-out partners." Corinthian last year struck a deal with the Department of Education to sell off most of its more than 100 campuses and wind down the rest amid concern about its marketing practices, including claims that the company falsified data about student job placement.