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Bankrupt fashion company Nine West Holdings Inc. has asked investment bank Lazard Ltd. to help it explore a sale, a month after its namesake brand known for its footwear and handbags fetched $340 million in an auction, Reuters reported. The sale of the Nine West brand, for $140 million more than the first offer, has emboldened the company to seek an outright sale for its remaining assets which include its jeanswear and jewelry businesses, and the Anne Klein and Kasper women’s’ brands. Some creditors had planned to convert their debt to equity in the remaining business. Nine West is also considering selling the businesses piecemeal. Nine West’s jeanswear and jewelry businesses, together with Anne Klein and Kasper, had net revenues of $1.1 billion in 2017, according to bankruptcy court documents. The jeanswear line includes Gloria Vanderbilt jeans sold in Costco Wholesale Corp., Kohls Corp. and Sears Holdings Corp. Brand licensor Authentic Brands Group LLC completed the acquisition of the Nine West brand this month after beating shoe retailer DSW Inc. in an auction.

Oaktree Capital Management LP, which has been an unhappy junior bondholder in the bankruptcy of Claire’s Stores Inc., said Thursday that the teen retailer’s rush to leave chapter 11 runs the risk of leaving a better offer on the table, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. For months Oaktree has said Claire’s continues to favor senior bondholders and private-equity owner Apollo Management Holdings LP at the expense of other parties. In a court filing on Thursday, Oaktree, which holds 72 percent of secured second-lien bonds in the Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based company, lodged numerous objections related to the disclosure statement Claire’s filed last week in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

More layoffs have taken place at the corporate offices of Sears Holdings in Hoffman Estates, Ill., CNBC.com reported. According to a WARN notice filed in Illinois a few weeks ago, about 200 workers have been laid off from the department store chain, with about 150 of those working specifically at Sears’ Hoffman Estates support center. This follows a round of about 220 jobs cut at Sears’ corporate offices earlier this year. Sears, having recently announced its plans to shutter 100 more unprofitable stores, is in the midst of evaluating a deal where Lampert would use his hedge fund vehicle, ESL Investments, to purchase some of the retailer’s assets to infuse cash into the business to keep it afloat. The company has been looking for ways to make it through the 2018 holiday season. It recently landed a deal with Citi for its branded credit card that injected more than $400 million into the business. It also earlier this month extended another credit facility, buying the company more time to pay back loans.

Four missing words in the new tax law mean fewer aging restaurants will get renovated this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. A tax-law goof put restaurants in a pickle, and some companies are postponing some of those projects as the retail, restaurant and commercial-real-estate industries push Congress to correct an inadvertent omission. As intended, the new tax law would have let restaurants and other companies deduct their renovation costs immediately, rather than over many years, providing an incentive to do such work. President Donald Trump recently praised immediate write-offs for these and other capital investments as “maybe the most important element” of the tax law. Instead, as written, restaurants and other companies must depreciate building-renovation costs over 39 years — a less favorable rule than existed before Congress changed the law. Under the prior law, a company making a $100 renovation could deduct the costs over 15 years, for a present-value equivalent of $84.38, according to a Tax Foundation analysis. The goal of the new law was to allow a full and immediate $100 deduction. Instead, with the deductions stretched out over 39 years, that same company can now deduct only $42.12 in present-value terms. Companies such as Stage Stores Inc., Texas Roadhouse Inc. and Publix Super Markets Inc. have all signed a letter urging Congress to act, warning of delays in construction projects rippling through local economies. But the change would likely require 60 votes in the Senate, where Republicans have just a 51-49 majority. The process of fixing this flaw and other technical problems in the law is moving slowly, weighed down in part by lingering partisan bitterness over the crafting of the tax law, which passed without a single Democratic vote.

Nineteen members of Congress sent a letter to the private-equity backers of Toys “R” Us Inc. questioning their role in the toy retailer’s bankruptcy and criticizing the leveraged-buyout model as an engine of business failure and job loss, the Wall Street Journal reported. The July 5 letter was addressed to the heads of KKR & Co., Bain Capital and Vornado Realty Trust and signed by 18 Democratic members of the House of Representatives and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). It asks whether the investment firms deliberately pushed Toys “R” Us into bankruptcy and encourages them to compensate the roughly 33,000 workers who lost their jobs. “Leveraged buyouts — such as those facilitated by your companies — often result in mass job loss, closure of profitable businesses and unnecessary financial burdens for local government,” the letter states. “Such buyouts harm communities, while investment managers walk away with significant gains.”

Shiekh Shoes LLC’s reorganization plan has become effective, and the retailer can add its name to the list of those that were able to survive a bankruptcy process without a liquidation, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Shiekh joins fellow footwear retailers such as The Walking Co. and Payless ShoeSource Inc. that closed a portion of stores under bankruptcy protection but continue to live on. For Shiekh, the key problems weren’t much different than those of its competitors that sought chapter 11 protection. Unsurprisingly, lack of liquidity and overexpansion were at the top of the list. The difference is that Shiekh faced those issues early on. “The big thing was identifying the issues early on that helped us achieve the goal of a restructuring,” said Asa Hami, an attorney from SulmeyerKupetz representing Shiekh. The company owed its secured lenders, including Comvest Capital, roughly $7 million on a senior secured loan, which it was able to repay once it found $16 million in bankruptcy financing, Hami said.

Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., Burlington Stores Inc. and TJX Cos. are among the retailers expected to fill the spaces vacated by defunct retailer Toys “R” Us Inc., according to one of the nation’s biggest owners of open-air shopping centers, the Wall Street Journal reported. More than 700 Toys “R” Us stores in the U.S. closed their doors last week after the retailer abandoned its plan to reorganize in a chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Many retailers also bid on Toys “R” Us locations in bankruptcy court, including Big Lots Inc., Scandinavian Designs, Ashley Homestores Ltd. and Ollie’s Bargain Outlet Holdings Inc., a filing shows. Many of the larger empty big-box storefronts will be filled by hobby stores soon, said Conor Flynn, chief executive of Kimco Realty Corp.

Many landlords are pushing to eliminate or narrow the co-tenancy clauses in leases for smaller stores in the wake of mass department-store closings, Bloomberg News reported. “Most retailers based in a mall do live or die based on an anchor,” said Andy Graiser, co-president of A&G Realty Partners, a commercial real-estate adviser. “Certain retailers are going to have a risk if certain anchors go away.” The past couple of years have brought hundreds of department-store closings. This is the result of of liquidations (Gordmans and Bon-Ton Stores Inc.), restructuring by struggling chains (Sears Holdings Corp. and J.C. Penney) and pullback by relatively healthy operators seeking to downsize their store presence (Macy’s, which is closing underperforming stores). While retailers are still flocking to the high-income “A” malls that make up about a third of enclosed centers, lower-tier properties are often struggling to replace lost merchants, sometimes turning to non-traditional tenants such as urgent-care centers. Landlords are now routinely pushing to chisel away co-tenancy provisions when leases come up for renewal, said Ivan Friedman, head of RCS Real Estate Advisors, a New York consulting firm. That wasn’t the case even a couple of years ago. That will have consequences, such as leading to fewer lease renewals, said Kent Percy, a managing director at consulting firm AlixPartners. “They could lose the whole inside of the mall,” he said. Many of those interior tenants have already suffered mightily, leading to bankruptcies like Gymboree Holding Corp. and Rue21 Inc., which reorganized with fewer stores. Percy and others did note that even robust co-tenancy clauses offered limited protection for tenants; landlords are inclined to push back on any legal lease-breaking, and the cost of battling them can be prohibitive. Read more.

Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available at the ABI Store. 

In the past two years, declining sales forced dozens of casual restaurant chains to close locations or file for chapter 11. But after changing hands, changing management or restructuring, many casual-dining chains are reinventing themselves to be more contemporary, the Wall Street Journal reported. They are swapping out giant portions of food for small plates, and upgrading ingredients and décor. Recent sales trends across the sector show promise. Same-store sales at casual-dining restaurants rose half a percent this year through April, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in the prior-year period, according to restaurant consultant Malcolm Knapp. With the rise of fast-casual chains — places like Panera Bread that offer food from a counter but are considered a step up from fast food — time-pressed consumers now have a range of quick-dining choices. Casual sit-down restaurants, however, still make up 34 percent of the $560 billion in total restaurant industry sales, according to Technomic Inc.

Comfort shoe company Rockport Co. said that it would scrap a planned bankruptcy auction of its assets after Boston-based private-equity firm Charlesbank was the only bidder for the company, the Wall Street Journal reported. The sale to Charlesbank Capital Partners LLC, which requires bankruptcy court approval, includes Rockport’s wholesale business, along with its Asia and Europe operations and retail stores. Rockport’s products are sold by retailers in 60 countries. Rockport filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in May, with $287 million in debt. It had changed hands a number of times in recent years before its bondholders took ownership last year. Adidas AG had acquired Rockport when it bought Reebok in 2006. In 2015, Adidas sold Rockport for $280 million to Boston firm Berkshire Partners and New Balance. Rockport’s biggest unsecured creditors in bankruptcy include Adidas, which claims it is owed more than $50 million.