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Nine West Holdings Inc.’s creditors want to put the shoe retailer’s debt deals — namely the transactions related to a private-equity firm’s leveraged buyout of the company — under the microscope, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The committee representing the retailer’s unsecured creditors believes there could be “a number of potential estate claims” stemming from the 2014 leveraged buyout and other transactions between the company and its private-equity backer, Sycamore Partners, court papers show. Nine West sought chapter 11 protection in April as it grappled with a $1.5 billion debt load, much of which was left over from the 2014 buyout. The committee isn’t the only group concerned there may be claims against Sycamore Partners. The company itself filed court papers on Monday supporting the creditors’ move to investigate the deals that led to the hefty debt load.

The Garces Restaurant Group is officially up for sale, after a contentious month-long process, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. Chef Jose Garces' eponymous restaurant group earlier this month announced it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and intended to sell for over $5 million to Louisiana-based Ballard Brands, which owns the PJ's Coffee franchise in New Orleans, among others. A federal judge on Wednesday awarded the Louisiana hospitality company stalking-horse status, with a current bid of $6.6 million, which sets that figure as the low-end bar on bids. Additional bids have a June 21 deadline. If there are competing bids, there will be an auction on June 26 at Greenberg Traurig in Philadelphia.

Sears Holdings Corp. said yesterday that it plans to close another 72 stores it has deemed unprofitable, as the company continues to struggle with falling sales, the Wall Street Journal reported. Sears has been closing hundreds of stores in recent years, selling brands and spinning off divisions to stay afloat as losses have mounted and as it struggles to keep its customers away from Walmart Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and other outlets. The new round of store closures comes as the retailer reported sales fell in the latest quarter, extending a streak of declines that stretches back more than six years at the once dominant retailer. The last time Sears’s sales increased from the previous year was in the third quarter of 2011, when the company had $9.4 billion in revenue, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

A scion of one of the last American department-store dynasties has a recipe for other ailing chains: stop being a department store, the Wall Street Journal reported. That realization came too late for Tim Grumbacher to save his own company, Bon-Ton Stores Inc., which is liquidating all of its 262 locations after filing for bankruptcy protection in February. “If I had had the foresight to realize I had to blow up the model, I would have,” the former CEO said. Grumbacher, the largest shareholder, who stepped down as CEO in 2004 but remained chairman until last year, says that he would have subleased space to other companies, added more services like blow-dry bars and narrowed the product assortment. He says consumers don’t want to shop in cavernous department stores anymore. “You almost have to be a series of specialty stores that people can get into and out of much faster,” Grumbacher said. One obstacle that prevented the company from making any big changes was a roughly $1 billion debt load, accrued through multiple acquisitions that created a rift between Grumbacher and his father, who ran Bon-Ton for more than four decades. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

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. 

West Point Market on Friday got the court approvals it needs to continue operating as it reorganizes under chapter 11 bankruptcy, Ohio.com reported. The approvals came just one day after the long-established and popular specialty supermarket, founded in Akron, Ohio, in 1936, filed for bankruptcy protection, citing in large part financial problems exacerbated by delays in opening a critically needed in-store bakery. The supermarket intends to remain open as it goes through the bankruptcy process.

The second-biggest franchisee of Applebee’s restaurants plans to close about 10 to 20 of its 159 locations in the next month or so as part of its bankruptcy reorganization, the Wall Street Journal reported. RMH Franchise Holdings Inc. on Thursday asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., for permission to pay up to $700,000 in severance, saying that it planned to close poor-performing restaurants in coming weeks. The filing didn’t specify how many restaurants that could include. A person familiar with the matter, however, said that about 10 to 20 could close in this cost-cutting round, with the severance being enough to cover up to 21 restaurants in this early stage of reorganization. In the Thursday court filing, Atlanta-based RMH said that it plans to close “certain underperforming restaurant locations in the next approximately 30 days.”

Tops Markets has settled a major pension dispute that could have cost the company more than $180 million, making its path out of bankruptcy clearer, the Buffalo (N.Y.) News reported. The settlement, reached earlier this month following two days of meetings with a mediator, could end a fight that has dragged on for more than four years. The dispute has cast a cloud over Tops' finances, as well as the retirement funds of more than 600 workers at a grocery warehouse in Lancaster that the supermarket company acquired in December 2013. While the details are still being finalized and the deal must be approved by a bankruptcy judge, the settlement would resolve one of the biggest financial hurdles that Tops faces as it tries to restructure its business and emerge from bankruptcy. For Tops, the deal frees it from an expense that could have cost it more than $100 million. The agreement means Tops no longer would be liable to pay as much as $183 million over 20 years to meet funding obligations to the Teamsters pension fund.

Toys “R” Us Inc. is moving forward with the sale of its brand name and other intellectual property assets as it continues to wind down its U.S. business and sell other parts of the international retailer’s empire, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips signed off on the sale procedures to sell these assets. The intellectual property assets include both the Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us brand names, website domain names, customer service lists and registries, and even the rights to the retailer’s mascot, Geoffrey the Giraffe. Even the data collected from the U.S. customer files, including product history, loyalty programs and the “birthday club,” will be a part of the package, court papers show. A consumer privacy ombudsman will be appointed to oversee the sale of such data.

Eddie Bauer LLC and Pacific Sunwear of California LLC are exploring a merger to consolidate their store footprint and weather a prolonged downturn in the U.S. brick-and-mortar retail sector, Reuters reported. The two sporty retailers have previously succumbed to bankruptcy and are searching for growth. In a merger, the companies could whittle down their store counts from their current total of nearly 700 together. Eddie Bauer and Pacific Sunwear are controlled by a common owner, private equity firm Golden Gate Capital. Eddie Bauer, which sells outdoor gear and apparel, is at risk of not keeping up with fashion changes, according to credit ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service Inc. It has a $218 million term loan and a $200 million revolving credit line. Anaheim, Calif.-based Pacific Sunwear emerged from bankruptcy in 2016 under the ownership of Golden Gate after the buyout firm converted its debt into equity in the restructuring. It emerged with a $100 million revolving line of credit from Wells Fargo.