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Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said yesterday that Mexican telecommunications company Maxcom Telecomunicaciones S.A.B. de C.V. will be allowed to fast-track its plan for restructuring about $103 million in bond debt, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Drain said that he would consider approving Maxcom’s pre-negotiated debt-cutting plan at a hearing in September. Maxcom and a U.S. subsidiary filed for chapter 11 protection this week with backing from creditors holding the majority of the bond debt. Pedro Jimenez, a Paul Hastings LLP lawyer representing Maxcom, said that the company originally intended to complete an exchange outside of court but changed course in part because the bonds were more widely held than the telecommunications firm first realized. The proposed plan would exchange Maxcom notes for $56.9 million in senior bonds, about $10.3 million in junior payment-in-kind notes and cash. The plan is intended to restructure the bonds, only, and would leave all other company stakeholders unimpaired, Jimenez said. Maxcom commenced the exchange offer in June, court papers say.

Maxcom Telecomunicaciones, S.A.B. de C.V., the Mexico City-based company that builds last-mile connections to businesses and consumers, yesterday filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. with a deal in hand for a debt swap with bondholders, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Erik González Laureano, chief financial officer of the Mexico City-based company, said in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York that 84.75 percent of bondholders in number and 66.73 percent in principal amount have voted to approve the debt swap. Maxcom, which has been losing money for years, skipped an interest payment in June to bondholders owed $103 million and at the same time launched a debt swap offer that pushes out the maturity on the notes to 2024. Under the plan, the bondholders will exchange their old notes for $56.9 million in senior bonds, about $10.3 million in junior payment-in-kind notes and cash. Maxcom launched the exchange offer because it needs more cash to invest in operations and to expand its network, but its old bond indenture prohibited the company from incurring additional indebtedness, González Laureano said.

Visa Inc. is rolling out a platform to help its engineers quickly test advanced artificial-intelligence algorithms aimed at detecting and preventing credit-card fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported. The platform, built in house and slated to be launched later this year, is an example of the broader financial-services industry trend of using AI to detect patterns in transactions that could signal criminal behavior. The platform is cloud-based, meaning that Visa’s researchers and engineers can access it online from anywhere. “One of the transformative technologies of this era is going to be AI,” said Rajat Taneja, executive vice president of technology and operations for Visa, the largest U.S. card network by cards in circulation and transactions. The banking industry is expected to be the second biggest spender on AI systems this year, behind retail, according to market-research firm International Data Corp. Banks are on track to spend $5.3 billion on AI in 2019, growing to $12.4 billion in 2023, on such initiatives as fraud analysis, according to IDC. Visa said it has spent about $500 million over the past five years on AI and data-infrastructure projects.

A judge declined to reopen a wireless company’s 2014 bankruptcy after it got caught up in a dispute over McKinsey & Co.’s conflict disclosures in chapter 11 cases, saying that investigating the matter is better left to the Justice Department, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. During a hearing yesterday at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, Judge Shelley Chapman said that McKinsey’s sprawling legal battle with corporate turnaround industry veteran Jay Alix should be resolved through a “constructive process” outside of the courtroom and with oversight from the U.S. Trustee Program, the Justice Department division that monitors the nation’s bankruptcy system. “At a certain point, somebody who reports wronging ought to just step back and let the people whose job it is to take care of it take over,” the judge said. The ruling largely was a victory for McKinsey, which has accused Mr. Alix of using a torrent of lawsuits that now span several states to drive it out of the often-lucrative business of advising troubled companies in bankruptcy.

Clover Technologies Group lenders have hired law firm Jones Day after one of the mobile phone refurbisher’s biggest customers said it was taking the bulk of its business elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal reported. Jones Day, which often represents creditors of struggling companies, will advise the group on pending discussions regarding restructuring some $650 million of the company’s debt. Clover Technologies refurbishes and recycles electronic equipment. Last week, its parent, 4L Holdings Corp., disclosed to investors that one of the largest customers of its wireless division has “decided to fulfill requirements for refurbished older units by purchasing them directly from the OEM [original equipment manufacturer] rather than having them refurbished by Wireless and other vendors.” Clover, which is based in Illinois and is owned by private-equity firm Golden Gate Capital, didn’t name the customer in the disclosure. However, two of the sources said it was AT&T. In addition to the loss of business from AT&T, Clover said it expected a loss of business from a customer of its imaging business.

Uniti Group Inc. is dangling the prospect of lower payments for Windstream Holdings Inc. on the disputed lease that helped trigger its bankruptcy in return for getting some surplus Windstream assets, Bloomberg News reported. Talks are underway, with Uniti envisioning a mutually beneficial transaction that includes a way to make up for the revenue it would lose if it reduces Windstream’s $650 million annual payments. Shares of Uniti jumped as much as 8.6 percent. Concessions could include transferring fiber network assets that Windstream isn’t using to Uniti, which could then lease those lines to a third party. A deal might also include an upfront payment by Uniti for the transferred assets or extending the lease beyond its 2030 expiration.

Democrats led by House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and backed by a coalition of watchdog groups are warning that Facebook must put its Libra digital currency on hold so lawmakers and regulators can consider whether it's a new threat to consumers and the global economy, Politico reported. This raises serious privacy, trading, national security and monetary policy concerns for not only Facebook's over 2 billion users, but also for investors, consumers and the broader global economy," the lawmakers told Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and other executives. Amid the public backlash, there are signs that Facebook's behind-the-scenes lobbying push is falling flat. Congressional aides said that the company seems unprepared for the attacks it is about to receive and that it's failing to address key questions in briefings ahead of hearings scheduled for July 16-17 in the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees. Facebook has yet to respond to questions that the Banking Committee sent to Zuckerberg in May regarding its then-unannounced digital currency plans and how it handles consumers' financial information.

MoviePass, the financially beleaguered movie-subscription service, shut down on July 4 for a number of days to revamp a mobile app that’s frustrated customers and to recapitalize, Bloomberg News reported. Subscribers will be credited for the time the service was down, the company said Wednesday. During this period, no new subscribers will be enrolled. “There’s never a good time to have to do this,” Chief Executive Officer Mitch Lowe said in the statement. “But to complete the improved version of our app, one that we believe will provide a much better experience for our subscribers, it has to be done.” Owned by Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc., the company also said it plans to use the down time to recapitalize, without providing details. MoviePass gained popularity with filmgoers by offering a $9.95-a-month subscription that let fans go to the movies every day. The company retooled that model several times as its losses ballooned. The parent company posted a loss of $329.3 million in 2018 on revenue of $232.3 million, according to a filing.

Bond trustees with $1.1 billion on the line in Windstream Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy want to stop the rural broadband provider from paying $54 million monthly to Uniti Group Inc. for access to network assets, the Wall Street Journal reported. The trustees, U.S. Bank NA and UMB Bank NA, said on Friday that Windstream shouldn’t be making more rent payments to Uniti while under chapter 11 protection but instead should be holding on to the cash for payment to all creditors. Windstream’s lease with Uniti is critical to its operations, and the two companies depend on each other, with Windstream supplying more than two-thirds of Uniti’s revenue in exchange for access to fiber and copper networks across the U.S. Windstream spun off those network assets into Uniti in 2015 and signed a lease to rent them out.