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Private-equity firm Silver Lake has reached out to iHeartMedia Inc. and its largest creditor group with an offer to invest about $500 million in the radio station operator, the Wall Street Journal reported. iHeartMedia’s largest creditor group, led by Franklin Mutual Advisers Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co., hasn’t accepted Silver Lake’s offer. Silver Lake, known for its investments in technology and media companies, would invest through convertible preferred shares, a hybrid instrument between debt and equity. Convertible preferred shares typically pay interest, and get paid before common equity. They also come with an option to convert to common equity at a specified share price. Silver Lake views iHeartMedia, the biggest radio broadcaster in the U.S., as an attractive growth investment opportunity.

A year after going public with the backing of venture-capital firms, cloud-storage business Tintri Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection yesterday and put its business up for sale, immediately drawing a bid from a data-storage supplier, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., comes after the Mountain View, Calif.-based company said that it was running out of cash and might be forced to stop operating and file for bankruptcy even if its lenders didn’t pressure it to repay its debt. The Silicon Valley business, whose customers include Toyota, Comcast and Sony, had revenue of more than $125 million last year but couldn’t turn a profit. The company posted annual losses of more than $100 million in each of the past three years.

California has passed a digital privacy law granting consumers more control over and insight into the spread of their personal information online, creating one of the most significant regulations overseeing the data-collection practices of technology companies in the U.S., the New York Times reported. The bill raced through the State Legislature without opposition yesterday and was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, just hours before a deadline to pull from the November ballot an initiative seeking even tougher oversight over technology companies. The new law grants consumers the right to know what information companies are collecting about them, why they are collecting that data and with whom they are sharing it. It gives consumers the right to tell companies to delete their information as well as to not sell or share their data. Businesses must still give consumers who opt out the same quality of service. It also makes it more difficult to share or sell data on children younger than 16.

IHeartMedia Inc., the biggest U.S. radio broadcaster, formally turned down a $1.16 billion bid from John Malone’s Liberty Media Corp., but other talks are continuing as the company navigates its way through bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. Liberty officially withdrew its bid June 15 after being informed that its offer for a 40 percent stake wasn’t enough to satisfy the company or its senior creditors, iHeart said in court filings on Thursday. The broadcaster still has “active conversations with other interested parties” and remains “willing to continue dialogue with Liberty,” iHeart said. “It is possible that such efforts result in the debtors obtaining a higher or better offer.” The pursuit of iHeart adds to a media-merger frenzy, as cable and telecom operators look to boost flagging growth by adding content providers. IHeart collapsed into bankruptcy this year after a 2008 leveraged buyout overloaded the company with debt that topped $20 billion. But it still ranks as the No. 1 U.S. operator of conventional radio stations, with 850 outlets and stars such as Rush Limbaugh, Ryan Seacrest and Sean Hannity. Based in San Antonio, Texas, iHeart also owns an online music streaming service, a live entertainment division and outdoor billboard advertising.

The co-founder of New York-based marketing firm Didit is interested in buying gossip website Gawker Media LLC out of bankruptcy after a U.S. judge yesterday approved a settlement with the investor Peter Thiel, whose funding of a lawsuit against Gawker forced it to close in 2016, Reuters reported. A bid by Kevin Lee, co-founder and executive chairman of Didit, has set a floor price for other potential buyers in a bankruptcy auction. As part of the settlement approved yesterday by Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein, Thiel Capital LLC agreed to drop its bid to buy Gawker and its archives and also agreed to release claims against any eventual buyer. The settlement was originally proposed when Thiel abandoned his effort to buy the defunct site last month. “We remain interested in Gawker.com and if we prevail, (we) plan to relaunch Gawker as Gawker For Good, using ad revenues to donate to nonprofits,” said Lee, a search engine marketing expert.

A U.S. bankruptcy court is set to hear a dispute involving Brazilian telecoms company Oi SA and major shareholder Bratel Brasil SA, Bratel said yesterday, as investor discontent with Oi’s bankruptcy reorganization process shows no signs of abating, Reuters reported. On Friday, Bratel, a subsidiary of Portugal’s Pharol SGPS SA, which owns almost 28 percent of Oi’s common shares, said that it had filed a legal complaint in the United States. The complaint alleges that the rights of Oi shareholders were violated as part of an agreement approved by creditors in December to severely dilute shareholders’ equity to take Oi out of bankruptcy protection. Bratel said yesterday that Bankruptcy Judge <b>Sean Lane</b>  had scheduled a hearing for May 29. Representatives for Oi criticized the move in a separate statement sent to Reuters, writing that the company “believes Pharol is acting in a totally isolated way in relation to all of the stakeholders in this process,” and that Pharol is trying to repeat arguments it unsuccessfully made in Brazilian courts.