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AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. said Thursday that it plans to issue a dividend to all common shareholders in the form of preferred shares, after it had difficulty issuing more common shares, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The cinema chain, which skirted bankruptcy during the pandemic and became a darling of meme-stock investors, is paying the dividend in the form of preferred equity units, which it has applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “APE.” The name is a nod to the crowd of individual investors, known as apes, who helped rescue the chain from the brink of bankruptcy. One Ape unit will be granted for each existing common share, meaning that close to 517 million new Ape units will be created, the company said. Each Ape unit will constitute one hundredth of a preferred share. AMC raised billions of dollars during the pandemic by selling new common shares, though last year it ran out of more to sell. The company tried to obtain shareholder approval to enable it to issue more common shares, but had difficulty corralling its investor base to support the initiative, in part due to some investors’ fears of dilution. The company’s new move to instead offer preferred equity units is a workaround to that constraint, and frees up a substantial number of units that it could sell as it continues to face challenges due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. After offering the 517 million Ape units as a dividend to shareholders, AMC will still have close to 4.5 billion remaining units that could be sold, according to securities filings.

Hertz Corp. has offered to settle about three dozen cases filed by renters that say they were wrongly arrested for auto theft, the company said, Bloomberg News reported. The settlement push comes after Colleen Batcheler took over as general counsel for the rental company. During her first month on the job, Batcheler made it her top priority to end suits from more than 230 customers accusing Hertz of improperly calling in police on its renters, mostly while haggling about overdue rentals. “We’ve tried to take a step back and say ‘How can we make progress in a way that is fair to our customers and is based on individual facts and circumstances,’” Batcheler said in an interview. Hertz lost a key court battle earlier this month when a federal judge allowed more than 70 customers to sue for false arrests. Until then, Hertz had successfully forced nearly all of the lawsuits to remain under the supervision of a bankruptcy judge in Wilmington, Delaware. Batcheler declined to say how much money the company was offering to the alleged victims and their families.

The U.S. Commerce Department yesterday unveiled a new strategy aimed at boosting international tourism hit hard by COVID-19 and government travel restrictions by streamlining the entry process and promoting more diverse destinations, Reuters reported. The "National Travel and Tourism Strategy" sets a goal of 90 million international visitors by 2027 who will spend an estimated $279 billion annually, topping pre-pandemic levels, the department told Reuters. "There are a lot of industries that are well past COVID — travel and tourism is not," U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said. The federal government must do more to support the resurgence of travel and tourism to ensure the industry rebuilds to be "more resilient, sustainable and equitable," according to the draft strategy document seen by Reuters. In 2019, the United States had 79.4 million international visitors, a figure that plummeted to 19.2 million in 2020 as the pandemic hit and rose to just 22.1 million in 2021. International visitors spent $239.4 billion in 2019, but just $81 billion in 2019, the Commerce Department said. Before COVID, tourism supported 9.5 million U.S. jobs and generated $1.9 trillion in economic output.

A bankruptcy judge installed a chapter 11 trustee to oversee the bankrupt Williamsburg Hotel, wresting control from its owner-developers after finding they had used the Brooklyn property’s funds on other unrelated investments, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., ruled after a three-day trial that developers Toby Moskovits and Michael Lichtenstein can’t be trusted to continue running the hotel operation and that an independent trustee should be installed to protect the business and its creditors. Mortgage lender Benefit Street Partners LLC had requested the appointment of a trustee in the bankruptcy case of the 147-room hotel, following reports by a court-appointed examiner that Ms. Moskovits and Mr. Lichtenstein siphoned off cash from the business, which they deny. The judge’s ruling snarls the developers’ efforts to end the hotel’s bankruptcy by restructuring its mortgage debt and pumping in $11 million in capital to retain their ownership interests. Benefit Street has argued for a sale of the hotel based in part on allegations that Ms. Moskovits and Mr. Lichtenstein had diverted revenue from the hotel to a related management company and other affiliated entities they controlled.