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Glenn Straub is “at it again,” according to lawyers for a handful of deserted restaurants trapped inside the shuttered Revel Casino Hotel in Atlantic City, N.J., the Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat Blog reported yesterday. Bankruptcy court papers filed earlier this month show yet another dispute between the restaurants and the Florida-based developer has flared up, this time fueled by nearly a quarter million dollars of alcohol — beer, wine and liquor left behind in the darkened resort. Last spring, a bankruptcy judge approved an $82 million sale of Revel to Straub, ending nearly 10 months of courtroom struggles for control of the property. The purchase price amounted to more than a 96 percent discount from the $2.4 billion it cost to build Revel. Revel never turned a profit after opening its doors in 2012 and landed in chapter 11 twice in just two years. But the judge’s order left unresolved one of the stickiest aspects of the sale: whether former business tenants, including the restaurants, can remain at Revel when — and if — the property reopens. The issue remains tied up in litigation.

A California bankruptcy court is set to weigh in on whether bitcoin should be considered a currency, CoinDesk.com reported today. The hearing, set for Feb. 19, follows months of legal wrangling between the trustee of bankrupt bitcoin mining firm HashFast and Marc Lowe, a former promoter for the service who operated under the handle “CypherDoc.” Trustee Michael Kasolas filed suit against Lowe in February of last year, seeking to recoup 3,000 bitcoins that had been paid by HashFast to Lowe for promoting the service, including a series of posts on the Bitcoin Talk forum. The trustees alleged that Lowe was an insider who received preferential treatment from the firm, including the awarding of a refund while other customers were awaiting theirs, prior to HashFast’s bankruptcy.

As mall owners prepare to report fourth-quarter earnings results, investors already are bracing for a tougher road ahead, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis yesterday. Real estate researcher Green Street Advisors is lowering its forecasts for the rent that large U.S. mall owners will be able to charge and the amount of space that will be occupied by tenants for years to come. Rents will grow at a paltry 1.5 percent annually for existing nonanchor tenants through 2019, Green Street now predicts, down from the 2.5 percent growth it anticipated a year ago for the same four-year period. Last January, the Newport Beach, Calif.-based researcher predicted that the occupancy rate for nonanchor tenants would rise above 96 percent in 2019. Now it expects that rate to drop to just over 94 percent by then. The occupancy rate in 2015 was nearly 95 percent.

With crude trading near its lowest level since 2003, banks large and small are clamping down further on how much they’re willing to lend to risky oil-and-gas companies, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Standard & Poor’s estimates that credit lines to these companies — the amount banks are willing to lend based on the value of the firms’ reserves — could be cut by 30 percent the next time banks conduct their twice-yearly reevaluations in April. That’s even after a reduction of about 10 percent in November, according to Thomas Watters, managing director of the credit rater’s oil and gas group. Banks including Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. and regional banks such as Comerica Inc. and SunTrust Banks Inc. have all voiced caution about the sector as increasing numbers of energy companies file for bankruptcy. Read more. 

Listen to a podcast featuring Deborah D. Williamson, a co-author of ABI's When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy, discussing current distress in the oil and gas industry, and providing an outlook for 2016. 

To purchase a copy of When Gushers Go Dry from the ABI Bookstore, please click here. 

Be sure to attend ABI’s Annual Spring Meeting in Washington, D.C., from April 14-17, as a panel of experts will further addressing bankruptcies in the oil industry. Register here. 

Labor unions lost a major battle when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held in In re Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. that a bankruptcy court retains power to reject a labor contract even after it expired by its own terms, according to Rochelle’s Daily Wire today. The Third Circuit’s decision on Friday was the first appeals court to decide the issue. Lower courts are split. Click here to read the full summary. 

Additionally, an analysis by the Washington Post today found that Donald Trump’s statements during the Presidential campaign about his companies’ bankruptcies play down his personal role in the downfall of the Taj Mahal. For months in 1987, Trump maneuvered to take control of the unfinished Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City as he snapped up stock in the parent company after its owner died and then made a surprise bid to take the company private. With the Taj, along with two casinos he already owned in the city, Trump could dominate gambling on the East Coast. But first he needed to convince state gambling regulators that he was financially stable and could raise enough cash to complete the $1 billion project. On Feb. 8, 1988, at a licensing hearing in front of the state Casino Control Commission, Trump said that because of his reputation as a dealmaker, he said, bankers were lining up to lend him money at prime rates. That meant he could avoid the risky, high-interest loans known as junk bonds. Trump received the approvals he needed for the Taj, but the prime-rate loans never materialized. Read more.