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Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. is selling 12 of its stores to Wakefern Food Corp. for $40 million, subject to higher bids at an auction, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. In a Thursday filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., A&P asked for the auction in accordance with “discrete” sales procedures already authorized by a judge for the stores that weren’t part of the initial group to be sold when it entered bankruptcy. If no objection is filed, no hearing will be held. If competing bids emerge, A&P will hold an Oct. 8 auction for the stores. If another bidder wins, that party must pay Wakefern a $1.2 million breakup fee.

The operator of the A&P supermarket chain won bankruptcy court approval to sell 95 of its stores for $370 million, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Acme Markets Inc. is buying 71 stores from Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. for $246 million, while Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. is taking on 24 locations for $124 million. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain approved the sales at a hearing yesterday. The deals will keep more than 10,750 people employed. Acme and Stop & Shop expect to reach labor agreements with the union representing workers at those stores, Ray Schrock, a lawyer for A&P, said at the hearing. An auction will be held on Oct. 1 and 2 for other company assets. About 128 bids have been received and an additional auction may be necessary, Schrock said.

Troubled retailer USA Discounters, which has been accused of scamming its military customers, will keep its chapter 11 case in one of the nation's busiest bankruptcy courts, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi recently ordered USA Discounters to defend its choice of the Delaware court over "some other appropriate venue," such as a Virginia court closer to its corporate headquarters. After hearing from the company and its creditors that the case should remain in Delaware, Judge Sontchi found that the company's choice of venue was legal and that other concerns — such as the convenience of creditors and the interest of justice — either support keeping the case in Delaware or were "neutral."

Grocery chain Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., commonly known as A&P, paid out $9.4 million in bonuses and other extra payments to insiders in the 12 months before its July bankruptcy but hasn't publicly named the recipients in court filings, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. According to court documents, eight A&P officers and directors received the money, which included $1.3 million in the form of bonuses. Another $6 million, doled out in April, is labeled as trust contributions, while $2.1 million in payments was reported as board/consulting fees. The extra pay was part of $13 million collected by a dozen unnamed officers and directors, a total that also included salary, benefits and expense reimbursements.

Data breaches generate more headlines, but fraud is a growing cost for retailers and financial institutions, as shown by the True Cost of Fraud report just released by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Aaron Press, director of retail, e-commerce and payments for LexisNexis, said that the best measure of retail fraud is the average loss of revenue, which in the year ended March 31, 2015 was 1.32 percent of total revenue, a 94 percent increase from 2014. Merchants have bulked up spending on fraud detection systems, and this led to more fraudulent transactions being prevented, but the report found merchants still had to spend staff time and resources on trying to determine if transactions flagged as being potentially fraudulent actually were fraud, or just false positives.

Lawyers for the former RadioShack said Wednesday the defunct electronics retailer had resolved about a dozen objections to its liquidation plan and will return to a bankruptcy courtroom today to seek a judge's order finalizing the proposal, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The former RadioShack also announced an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department over a $72 million tax bill, appearing to clear a major hurdle. Lawyers for both sides asked Judge Brendan Shannon to sign off on the liquidation plan, which distributes proceeds from the company's liquidation to its creditors. But the deal is subject to a lengthy government approval process. Christopher Williamson, a lawyer for the Justice Department, called the agreement announced yesterday "just the first step in the process."

The judge in Montvale, N.J.-based A&P’s bankruptcy case said on Friday that he will not approve a $3.9 million retention pay plan for non-union employees unless the company adds another $1.1 million to its severance payments, which would go mostly to union workers, NorthJersey.com reported on Friday. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said that he recognizes the need for retention bonuses for certain non-union employees, but that something needs to be done for the employees not eligible for the bonuses, particularly the union employees in the stores. A&P originally had asked for up to $5 million for bonus payments for 495 employees, but this week reduced the request to $3.9 million for 468 workers, creating a savings of $1.1 million. Judge Drain said that he will approve the retention pay request if it is amended to allocate the unspent $1.1 million to the pool of money being used to pay severance.