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A nearly two-year long battle between iHeartMedia Inc. and a bondholder group led by Franklin Resources Inc. is coming to a head in the wake of the company's proposal of a sweetened offer, Dow Jones Newswires reported today. A resolution to the standoff could allow iHeart to avoid bankruptcy. In its battle to win over bondholders who hold the key to its fate, iHeart Communications has signed up a group of funds led by Eaton Vance Investment Management, Symphony Asset Management and OppenheimerFunds to convince holders -- especially Franklin -- that it is better to take the new deal than push the company into bankruptcy, according to people familiar with the matter. For months, iHeart had circulated an offer that hands over as much as 49 percent of the equity in both iHeart and its valuable Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings billboard unit to bondholders if a substantial group of them agree to extend maturities and take haircuts, or markdowns, on their debt.

People who lent money to Fyre Festival before it collapsed are now trying to force the company that ran the event into bankruptcy following the arrest of William “Billy” McFarland, the man behind the ill-fated music festival, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Hyped as “the cultural experience of the decade,” Fyre Festival was to be held in the Bahamas over two weekends in April and May featuring artists like Migos and Lil Yachty. But the festival proved to be a flop when attendees, some of whom paid thousands of dollars, arrived at the private party venue only to find a half-built festival ground, bad food and canceled musical acts. “We look forward to finding out where the money went,” said Robert Knuts, a lawyer at Sher Tremonte LLP, who filed a petition Friday in New York against Fyre Festival LLC on behalf of three lenders who sunk $530,000 into the event. Knuts said that they are part of a larger group of more than 20 individuals who together lent more than $4 million to Fyre Festival.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. hired two executives to help expand beyond gambling, including licensing the Caesars and Harrah’s brands to hotels that may not feature casinos, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. As Caesars’ biggest division emerges from bankruptcy protection, a number of potential investors have expressed interest in building resorts flying the company’s flags, in the U.S. and abroad, Chief Executive Officer Mark Frissora said in an interview. Caesars’ customer loyalty program, with some 50 million members, is an attractive asset that lodging operators could use to market their properties, he said. Marco Roca, a veteran of Wyndham Worldwide Corp. and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, will join Caesars as president of global development, the company said in a statement Thursday. Michael Daly, who worked for 15 years at General Electric Co., will serve as senior vice president for strategy and mergers and acquisitions.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. hired two executives to help expand beyond gambling, including licensing the Caesars and Harrah’s brands to hotels that may not feature casinos, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. As Caesars’ biggest division emerges from bankruptcy protection, a number of potential investors have expressed interest in building resorts flying the company’s flags, in the U.S. and abroad, Chief Executive Officer Mark Frissora said in an interview. Caesars’ customer loyalty program, with some 50 million members, is an attractive asset that lodging operators could use to market their properties, he said. Marco Roca, a veteran of Wyndham Worldwide Corp. and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, will join Caesars as president of global development, the company said in a statement Thursday. Michael Daly, who worked for 15 years at General Electric Co., will serve as senior vice president for strategy and mergers and acquisitions.

Caesars Entertainment Operating Corp. received a bankruptcy court’s approval in January to end a chapter 11 case that began in January 2015. But the proceedings continue to make payments to law firms Kirkland & Ellis, Jones Day and Proskauer Rose, the American Lawyer reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge A. Benjamin Goldgar in Chicago approved another round of payouts last week in a case that has shaved $10 billion in debt from the gaming giant’s balance sheet. The payments, for work dating from October through the closing of the bankruptcy on Jan. 17, will push Kirkland’s payout to more than $70 million for representing Caesars. Kirkland will receive $7.1 million for three-and-a-half months’ work on behalf of the debtor. Proskauer, which represented a group of unsecured creditors in the case, will be paid about $2.2 million for its work during that timeframe, bringing its total to around $29 million. And Jones Day, which went to bat for a group of second-lien junior bondholders, will make about $1.5 million in the sixth payout of legal fees since the case began more than two years ago, bringing the Cleveland-founded firm’s total payout to just north of $25 million, according to bankruptcy court filings. For those three firms, there is likely to be at least one more payment authorized by the court, but the legal fees have largely tapered off from earlier in Caesars’ chapter 11 proceedings.

The Pearl Theater Company, which took the old-fashioned approach of assembling a resident acting company to mount classic plays in increasingly expensive spaces in Manhattan, announced yesterday that it had filed for bankruptcy and was closing after 33 years, the New York Times reported today. The Off Broadway troupe’s demise reflected both financial pressures faced by many small performing arts organizations these days, and a series of missteps that the Pearl had made. In recent years, as the company was buffeted by rising rents, it moved from its longtime home on St. Marks Place in the East Village to New York City Center Stage II in Midtown to its current home on West 42nd Street — where executives signed a 20-year lease in 2012 on a theater that quickly proved unaffordable. The company spent most of its already-small endowment in 2012, depleting it to $28,066 from $241,354, to help with its moving and construction costs. And the costs of its new 42nd Street home were rising: the company’s most recent annual report said its minimum lease payment would be $282,825 this year, growing to $329,317 in 2020.

Caesars Entertainment Corp. will resurface from bankruptcy this year after nearly a decade of struggles with unsustainable debt dating back to the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Now it faces a new challenge: How to grow when gambling is already within driving distance of virtually every American, and even international development prospects have diminished. Caesars expects shareholders to vote on a plan to emerge from bankruptcy by late September, and executives in recent weeks have begun offering their vision for the company’s future. Having extinguished $10 billion in debt following a brutal bankruptcy reorganization, Caesars will have the balance sheet to pursue acquisitions and new investments in the way that rivals such as MGM Resorts International have done in recent years. But the reconstituted Caesars faces hurdles that illuminate how much the world of casino gambling has shifted since the company was purchased in a disastrously timed 2008 private-equity buyout.