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Energy Future Holdings Corp. and its warring creditor groups expressed optimism about a new round of talks over an $11 billion proposal to reorganize the company so it can exit bankruptcy by year’s end, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Company officials “believe the time is right to begin a determined march” to end the $42 billion chapter 11 case, attorney Edward Sassower told a bankruptcy judge at a hearing yesterday. Some creditors of Dallas-based Energy Future have proposed raising $11 billion in debt and equity, a lawyer for a group of lower-ranking debt holders told the judge. A deal could be two months off, should everybody involved in the latest negotiations stick with their current positions, said the attorney, Chris Shore, who represents a group of creditors that has fought the company since the bankruptcy began 11 months ago.

The latest salvo in Standard Register Co.’s bankruptcy case was fired by Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund Silver Point — which agreed to a $275 million purchase of the Dayton-based company — against the unsecured creditors’ committee in the case, the Dayton (Ohio) Business Journal reported yesterday. In a court filing late last week, Silver Point says that the committee unfairly maligned it by putting out a conspiracy theory that manipulative transactions led to Standard Register's financial troubles without any substantial evidence and without offering any constructive alternatives. Silver Point also says that the committee ignored evidence showing that Standard Register pursued another potential bidder for the stalking-horse position, with Silver Point’s support. Standard Register provides document management as well as business and marketing communication products and services.

Headed to the bankruptcy auction block in May is the well-known trademark of RadioShack, as well as the data of millions of customers and contracts with hundreds of independent dealers strung across small-town America, who have been selling under the RadioShack name for decades, the Wall Street Journal reported today. It is all for sale in a bankruptcy that, so far, has only paid off part of the $1 billion or so in debt that had pushed RadioShack Corp. into bankruptcy in February. While much of the business was saved through a takeover by Standard General LP, the corporate shell of RadioShack left behind in chapter 11 is still trying to scrape up more cash for creditors. More than half the 4,000 stores are being liquidated, but the hedge fund rescued over 1,700 stores and is leading a revival of the retailing operation.

Chassix Holdings Inc. received bankruptcy court approval to access $250 million in debtor-in-possession financing, Crain’s Detroit Business reported on Saturday. The Southfield, Mich.-based automotive supplier filed for chapter 11 protection on March 12. The company, wholly owned by Tom Gores’ Platinum Equity LLC, filed a pre-packaged restructuring plan with support from 80 percent of its unsecured bondholders and 71.5 percent of its secured bondholders. The bondholders represent about $525 million in creditor claims of its $556.7 million in total debt. Chassix has $34.3 million in assets, according to a court filing.

The companies that own Hollywood Pavilion hospital, whose former CEO is currently in prison for Medicare fraud, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization to stay a foreclosure lawsuit, the South Florida Business Journal reported yesterday. Former Hollywood Pavilion CEO Karen Kallen-Zury was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2013 after being convicted of more than $39 million in fraudulent billing by bribing patients to receive phony care at its facility. She has appealed her conviction. Later that year, the 58,189-square-foot hospital and rehab facility was hit with a foreclosure lawsuit. Subsequent to the lawsuit being filed, an entity related to South Miami, Fla.-based Larkin Community Hospital bought the distressed mortgage and took over management of both the 50-bed hospital and the 152-bed rehabilitation facility under a receivership court order. The foreclosure lawsuit is pending. http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/news/2015/04/09/hollywood-hospital-files-chapter-11-as-former-ceo.html?ana=twt

For more on hospital and medical bankruptcies, be sure to pick up a copy of the ABI Health Care Insolvency Manual, Third Edition from the ABI Bookstore. 

Creditors say that retailer Cache Inc. has been running up bills it can't pay and should be pushed out of chapter 11 into a barebones form of bankruptcy, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The official committee that represents landlords and suppliers to the women's dress and formalwear retailer Wednesday asked a bankruptcy judge to convert Cache's bankruptcy into a chapter 7 case and allow a trustee to take over the proceeding.

Caesars Entertainment Corp.’s $468 million bankruptcy dispute will go to trial in August as the judge overseeing the case said that it’s probably irrelevant whether the casino company or its creditors acted in bad faith when they filed dueling petitions in January, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Whether Caesars paid its debts as they came due is the main question, Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar said during a hearing yesterday. Judge Goldgar must decide if the bankruptcy started Jan. 15 when the company filed its case or three days earlier when lower-ranking creditors filed an involuntary petition. Creditors can challenge a claim by senior lenders to $468 million in cash if they win. Credit Suisse Group AG, acting as an agent for senior lenders that loaned Caesars billions of dollars, sued lower-ranking creditors on Tuesday claiming they violated lender agreements. The suit is one of several related to restructurings and refinancings by Caesars.

A bankruptcy court issued an order denying the ad hoc group of NII Capital 2021’s noteholders' motion for an order directing NII Holdings to participate in mediation, BankruptcyData.com reported today. The noteholders had argued in their mediation motion that the debtors were holding companies, “and as such, a hypothetical chapter 7 liquidation of the debtors would permit going-concern sales of the debtors' equity in their nondebtor subsidiaries that hold valuable businesses.” 

Xinergy Ltd., a U.S. producer of metallurgical and thermal coal, announced that the company and 25 of its subsidiaries filed for chapter 11 protection yesterday, Nasdaq.com reported. The company stated that it will operate its businesses and continue customer shipments without interruption during the reorganization. Xinergy will continue to pay its employees in the normal course and also filed a motion with the court seeking to honor its pre-petition employee obligations.

The lawyer handling the federal bankruptcy portion of the 38 Studios legal issues has reached another in a string of financial settlements in the lengthy case, the Providence (R.I.) Journal reported today. When 38 Studios filed for federal bankruptcy in June 2012, federal court filings showed that it owed $150 million and had just $21 million in assets — including $12.7 million then held in reserve by the state in public bond proceeds. A federal judge appointed Jeffrey L. Burtch, a Delaware lawyer, to wind down the company's operations. Burtch filed about 20 separate claims in 2014 against vendors to "claw back" money that would go to pay the company's creditors. He sought to get back nearly $1 million, in all, from firms including PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, Dell Marketing LP, Oracle America Inc., the Hilton Providence hotel and others. According to a filing made earlier this month, software company Oracle America Inc. has agreed to pay $30,000 to settle the claim against it.