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Sears Canada Creditors Zero In On Lampert Payments

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Sears Canada Inc. creditors are targeting Eddie Lampert, its former controlling shareholder and the chief executive of its U.S. namesake Sears Holdings Corp., over payments he received before the Canadian business collapsed last year, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A group of unhappy pensioners served court papers on Friday in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice asking for the appointment of a trustee in Sears Canada’s bankruptcy proceeding for the purpose of digging up additional funds for creditors. The proposed trustee would scrutinize nearly $3 billion in shareholder dividends paid out since 2005, of which Lampert and his hedge fund ESL Investments Inc. were “major beneficiaries,” according to the papers.

Takata Settles Air-Bag Claims to Clear Way Out of Bankruptcy

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Takata Corp.’s U.S. operations, pushed into bankruptcy by the largest automotive recall in U.S. history, settled with two groups representing victims of its faulty air bags, Bloomberg News reported. Two committees for people suing over the air bags have agreed to support a bankruptcy-exit plan that would resolve lawsuits by channeling them into a trust funded in part by the sale of Takata assets. Takata has recalled millions of air bags that had been linked to deaths in the U.S. Defective air bags can explode in car crashes, sending metal shards flying. Japan-based Takata entered a guilty plea last year as part of a $1 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over the air-bag problems. On Tuesday, the company is scheduled to seek final approval of its reorganization plan, which is built on a sale and setting up a trust to handle air-bag claims. The two groups representing the air-bag plaintiffs have agreed to drop their opposition to the plan, according to court documents.

Judge says Oi Shareholders Meeting Has No Effect on Restructuring

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A Rio de Janeiro judge decided yesterday that a shareholders meeting called by a major equity holder in debt-laden Brazilian telecoms carrier Oi SA will have no legal effect on the company’s in-court restructuring, Reuters reported. Responding to various petitions from Oi shareholders, Judge Ricardo Lafayette Campos also upheld a plan approved by bondholders in December and courts in January to take the company out of bankruptcy protection. In December, after a dramatic and fractious 18-month battle, bondholders in Oi — Brazil’s largest fixed-line carrier — approved the plan to take the carrier out of bankruptcy protection and inject billions of dollars of fresh capital into the carrier. During the proceedings, the judge overseeing the case removed the company’s board from the process, and creditors eventually approved a plan with a significant equity dilution.

Citigroup Wins Dismissal of $2.2 Billion Claim by Parmalat

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Citigroup Inc. said an Italian court rejected a 1.8 billion-euro ($2.2 billion) civil claim filed by Parmalat SpA against the bank over the food company’s collapse in 2003, Bloomberg News reported. The Milan court dismissed a lawsuit filed against the lender and a number of its former employees in June 2015, according to a statement by New York-based Citigroup and a copy of the ruling seen by Bloomberg. The court said that the claim was a duplication of a case that was dismissed in New Jersey in 2008 and that it shouldn’t be allowed to proceed in Italy.

Scottish Re Subsidiaries File for Bankruptcy

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Two subsidiaries of Scottish Re Group Ltd. have filed for bankruptcy with a deal in hand to sell to an investment fund connected to a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Facing five years of deferred interest payments coming due, Scottish Annuity & Life Insurance Co. and Scottish Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy Sunday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Their parent is reinsurance company Scottish Re Group Ltd., which is owned by Cerberus and MassMutual Capital Partners LLC. Reinsurance provides insurance for insurance companies. The parent company isn’t part of the bankruptcy and has commenced voluntary winding-up proceedings in the Cayman Islands, according to court filings.

Hacked Tokyo Cryptocurrency Exchange to Repay Owners $425 Million

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Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc. said yesterday that it would return about 46.3 billion yen ($425 million) of the virtual money it lost to hackers two days ago in one of the biggest-ever thefts of digital money, Reuters reported. That amounts to nearly 90 percent of the 58 billion yen worth of NEM coins the company lost in an attack that forced it to suspend on Friday withdrawals of all cryptocurrencies except bitcoin. Coincheck said that it would repay the roughly 260,000 owners of NEM coins in Japanese yen, though it was still working on timing and method. Two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said that Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) sent a notice to the country’s roughly 30 firms that operate virtual currency exchanges to warn of further possible cyber-attacks, urging them to step up security.

Cobalt Gets Court Approval on $500 Million Sonangol Settlement

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Houston’s Cobalt International Energy Inc. has moved a step closer to extricating itself from an Angolan oil venture, winning bankruptcy court approval of a $500 million settlement with Angola’s state-controlled energy group Sonangol, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Cobalt’s history with Angola has been a troubled one, sparking lawsuits and investigations, and featuring a failed effort to sell the company’s Angolan assets to Sociedade Nacional de Combustíveis de Angola — Empresa Pública, or Sonangol, for $1.75 billion. The order signed by Judge Marvin Isgur ends the fighting and transfers the assets to Sonangol, as long as $500 million arrives in bank accounts in the U.S. The money needs to arrive in Cobalt’s U.S. bank accounts, or there is no settlement, according to the order signed by Judge Isgur at the hearing in a Houston bankruptcy court. While Cobalt’s creditors await the Sonangol cash, they are looking for buyers for assets in the Gulf of Mexico, and trying to hammer out agreements that will ease it to confirmation of a chapter 11 plan by the end of March. Judge Isgur also approved rules for bidding on Cobalt, setting a March 6 auction.