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AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron made his New Year’s resolution public Monday: he’d like to see the movie theater chain cut burdensome interest costs his company racked up during its dramatic pandemic rescue, Bloomberg News reported. “In 2020 and early 2021, AMC took on debt at high interest rates to survive,” Aron tweeted Monday. “I’d like to refinance some of our debt to reduce our interest expense, push out some debt maturities by several years and loosen covenants.” AMC paid more than $320 million in interest on its borrowings in the nine months through Sept. 30, according to company regulatory filings, up from about $219 million in the same period in 2019. Like other companies hit hard by Covid, the theater operator nabbed several rounds of emergency financing to help stave off bankruptcy after the pandemic took hold in the U.S. The company later caught the attention of fanatical equity bulls on Twitter and Reddit, who sent the stock surging to closing levels as high as $62.55 last year. The dramatic equity comeback allowed the company to cut borrowings and shore up liquidity by selling shares. But the company still has debt with double-digit coupons outstanding. Aron didn’t elaborate on how AMC would look to refinance its debt, tweeting only that “There is no guarantee of success, but we will try very hard to get this done. We are always thinking of creative ways to make AMC’s future more secure.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned people on December 30 not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of onboard outbreaks fueled by the omicron variant, the Associated Press reported. The CDC said that it has more than 90 cruise ships under investigation or observation as a result of COVID-19 cases. The agency did not disclose the number of infections. “The virus that causes COVID-19 spreads easily between people in close quarters on board ships, and the chance of getting COVID-19 on cruise ships is very high,” even if people are fully vaccinated and have received a booster, the CDC said. The Cruise Lines International Association said that it was disappointed with the new recommendations, saying the industry was singled out despite the fact it follows stricter health protocols than other travel sectors. The decision “is particularly perplexing considering that cases identified on cruise ships consistently make up a very slim minority of the total population onboard,” a statement said. “The majority of those cases are asymptomatic or mild in nature, posing little to no burden on medical resources onboard or onshore.” In March 2020, as the coronavirus took hold in the U.S., the CDC put a halt to all cruises for what turned out to be 15 months. Last June, it allowed ships to resume sailing under new strict new conditions. In August, as the delta variant surged, the agency warned people who are at risk of severe illness despite being vaccinated not to go on cruises. The CDC on Dec. 30 also recommended that passengers get tested and quarantine for five days after docking, regardless of their vaccination status and even if they have no symptoms.

Nevada casinos set a record in November, reporting a ninth straight month of $1 billion or more in house winnings, gambling regulators said, providing another sign that business in the nation’s tourist-dependent gambling mecca has returned to pre-pandemic levels, the Associated Press reported. The $1.32 billion in casino winnings reported statewide last month was up from $1.22 billion in October, and almost reached the record $1.36 billion figure set last July, the Nevada Gaming Control Board reported. The streak beat the previous record of eight consecutive months set before the Great Recession, from October 2006 to May 2007. Nevada sports betting also set records — reaping a record $72 million in November on sports wagers totaling $1.1 billion. The previous record was $61.8 million in sports bets won by casinos in November 2020, and sports books took in more than $1 billion in wagers in consecutive months for the first time. Most sports wagers were made with mobile betting apps. Business generally has been buoyed by visitors with money to spend, Lawton said, and a sustained rebound of leisure travel and the return in early November of airline flights from international places other than Canada and Mexico. Special events and entertainment also helped push casino winnings for the year-to-date to almost 12% past 2019 levels. The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported 3.1 million visitors during the month, down 8% from 3.4 million in October. The regional tourism agency reported an average daily room rate of almost $156, up more than 15% from a year ago.

The judge who oversaw Hertz Global Holdings Inc.’s chapter 11 restructuring trimmed bondholders’ requests for early repayment premiums and interest payments, saying that some claims aren’t payable under U.S. bankruptcy law or the company’s debt contracts, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Mary Walrath of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., said that Hertz’s unsecured bondholders weren’t entitled to collect interest payments at the contractual rate following the rental-car company’s bankruptcy filing last year. The judge also absolved Hertz of any obligation to make premium payments on bonds that were scheduled to come due in 2022 and 2024 to compensate for the early retirement of those debts. These premiums, known as make-wholes, are a common form of protection for creditors, designed to make up for lost interest payments when bonds are redeemed or refinanced ahead of the scheduled maturity. On Hertz bonds maturing in 2026 and 2028, bondholder trustee Wells Fargo Bank NA put forth a viable claim for the premium payments that will require further proceedings to evaluate, the judge said. Whether those make-wholes are in fact due will depend on whether they are the economic equivalent of unmatured interest, which the judge said she couldn’t yet decide on the record before her.

A federal bankruptcy judge issued a $250-a-day fine to former operators of the Queen Mary who are accused of stealing $2.4 million from a COVID-19 relief loan meant to pay their employees during the pandemic, the Los Angeles Times reported. The judge’s order on Tuesday arrives amid a bankruptcy proceeding over how a real estate firm maintained the aging ship as part of a lease agreement with the city of Long Beach, which owns the ship and a parcel of land around the port. Urban Commons set its sights on revamping the retired British ocean liner as a tourist destination, but within five years of the company taking over the lease, a real estate investment trust it had created filed for bankruptcy, leaving behind a trail of debt. Beginning in 2016, Urban Commons held a 66-year lease to operate the Queen Mary and develop the surrounding land. It created Eagle Hospitality Real Estate Trust as an investment entity to generate revenue from the Queen Mary’s role as a hotel and from other hospitality ventures, but in January of this year, the trust filed for bankruptcy protection with roughly $500 million in debt. The Queen Mary is in poor shape. This year the city of Long Beach took back control of the ship after Eagle Hospitality Trust filed for bankruptcy. A recent report estimated it could cost the city $175 million to preserve the ship and $190 million to scrap it or sink it. A 2017 report estimated $289 million worth of renovations and upgrades were required to keep the ship afloat.

A Canadian court ordered Cineworld Group PLC to pay 1.29 billion Canadian dollars, equivalent to about $1 billion, in damages for walking away from a merger agreement with Cineplex Inc. after the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the movie-theater industry world-wide, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. An Ontario judge rejected arguments by U.K.-based Cineworld that Canada-based Cineplex violated the terms of a planned merger between the two companies when it took steps to conserve cash by deferring payments to landlords, vendors and film studios after box offices shut down in the early days of COVID-19’s global spread. “Cineplex cannot be held in default…when it was prevented from conducting its normal day-to-day operations by government mandate,” said Justice Barbara Conway of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in her ruling on Tuesday. Cineworld, which operates the Regal cinema chain in the U.S., said it would appeal the decision and “does not expect damages to be payable whilst any appeal is ongoing.” It reported about $450 million in cash holdings as of June and previously said it expected “no material liability” to arise from the Cineplex lawsuit. The U.K.-based company warned earlier this year there was doubt about its viability as a business after it posted a $3 billion loss for 2020 because of the pandemic’s impact. Cineplex had sought US$2.2 billion in damages from Cineworld for backing out of the acquisition.

Airlines are scrambling to limit the impact of the latest coronavirus variant on their networks, while delays in bookings are threatening an already-fragile recovery for global tourism, Reuters reported. Shares in airlines bounced back with the rest of the market on Monday after a sharp sell-off on Friday when the discovery of a new coronavirus mutation took a heavy toll on stocks. The latest outbreak, first reported in southern Africa, dealt a blow to the industry just as it had recovery in its sights, especially following the easing of U.S.-bound travel. Multiple countries including Japan, the United States, Britain and Israel have imposed travel curbs in order to slow the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant. "The hope for U.S. and European carriers had been that opening the Atlantic would allow them to operate long-haul routes on a cash-positive basis, but border restrictions make it even harder to get the demand in," said James Halstead, managing partner at consultancy Aviation Strategy. A pickup in long-haul traffic is seen critical for many carriers, which have been left with severely strained balance sheets following the plunge in air travel last year. Southern Africa accounts for only a tiny portion of the world's international travel, but sudden border restrictions and route suspensions have left some carriers with an uncertain future.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. has surged almost 20-fold this year after thousands of retail investors piled in to defend the stock against short sellers looking to profit from its decline. “You buy. You hold,” read a recent tweet with dozens of likes. Top management has taken a different tack, Bloomberg News reported. Executives and board members at the movie theater chain have unloaded shares worth more than $70 million in 2021 after selling a fraction of that amount in prior years, according to regulatory filings. Chief Executive Officer Adam Aron became the biggest seller of that group this month when he sold stock worth more than $25 million, saying it was prudent for estate-planning purposes. None have made purchases. Many of the stock sales, including Aron’s, were pre-planned. A spokesman for Leawood, Kansas-based AMC, declined to comment. AMC was struggling financially for years even before the pandemic pummeled the theater business in 2020, causing a sharp drop-off in revenue from which the industry still hasn’t recovered. But in January, fired-up retail traders rushed in, driving up the share price and helping rescue AMC from the brink of bankruptcy.