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Cloud-based trading platform provider Liquid Holdings Group Inc. won approval from a bankruptcy judge on Friday to move forward with its case as it is in negotiations with an interested bidder, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Liquid filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, blaming a series of problems facing the company including securities-breach lawsuits, a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, losing its largest customer and failing to file its financial statements for more than a year. The Hoboken, N.J.-based company hired an investment banker in October to sell the company, but was unable to find a buyer willing to do a deal outside of the bankruptcy process.

Slumping valuations for once-hot technology companies after they go public are drawing increased scrutiny from U.S. regulators, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White expressed concerns that some stock brokers may be painting too-rosy a picture of private tech companies. Anytime there is a “significant” change in how much a company is worth after an initial public offering, it raises questions about the impact on investors who purchased unlisted shares, White said yesterday. White’s comments come as more investors are trying to figure out ways to pour money into Silicon Valley companies that are staying private longer. While startups face few obligations for what they must disclose about their finances, their shares are being marketed to people far less versed than venture capitalists on how to value startups. Read more. 

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Telecom firm Great Lakes Comnet Inc., which connects telecom giants like Verizon to customers in rural Michigan through a 6,500 mile-long fiber network, filed for bankruptcy protection as it battles AT&T Corp. over illegally charged fees, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Officials who put Great Lakes Comnet into chapter 11 protection on Monday accused AT&T officials of withholding more than $24 million in payments for service although the Federal Communication Commission has yet to determine how much Great Lakes Comnet owes in the dispute. AT&T filed a complaint against Great Lakes Comnet in October 2014, saying it charged higher fees than were allowed by a regulatory benchmark for interstate access services. The FCC, which ruled in AT&T's favor in March 2015, has yet to calculate damages. AT&T officials, however, have stopped paying the full billed amount for the services it receives from Great Lakes Comnet, Chief Executive John Summersett said in court papers.

Parties seeking a chunk of the $7 billion raised from the liquidation of former telecommunications giant Nortel Networks started talks yesterday aimed at ending one of the most complex and costly legal disputes in history, Reuters reported yesterday. The money has been sitting in a New York bank account since Nortel Networks global businesses were sold piecemeal after the Ontario-based company filed for bankruptcy exactly seven years ago. The talks on yesterday in New York include representatives from former Nortel operations in the United States, Canada and Europe, according to two sources who declined to be identified because the mediation was confidential. The parties had presented dramatically differing proposals to a judge in Ontario and a U.S. Bankruptcy judge in Delaware during a novel, joint trial in 2014 aimed at dividing the cash. The judges issued coordinated opinions in May that rejected the proposals from the various Nortel estates and ruled that every creditor would receive roughly 71 cents on the dollar, a position backed by some creditors. That sparked appeals. If the current talks can reach a settlement to divide the cash, it would end the appeals process. One of the big fears among the parties is that parallel appeals in the United States and Canada could result in conflicting rulings that further complicate the dispute. "It's a Charles Dickens novel," said Melissa Jacoby, a law professor and resident scholar at the American Bankruptcy Institute.

Nortel Networks Corp.’s warring creditors will meet in New York today seeking to end a standoff that has kept pensioners and bondholders waiting to divvy up $7.3 billion in the defunct telecommunications company’s seven-year bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The goal is to resolve court appeals in the U.S. and Canada so the money, most of which was raised in one of the most successful patent auctions in the U.S., can be distributed. Nortel retirees in Canada and the U.K. have been fighting with U.S. bondholders over how to divide the cash, raised when Nortel’s U.S. unit sold a bundle of patents in 2011 to a group that included Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc. and Sony Corp. In May, judges in the U.S. and Canada ruled that the money should be split on a proportional basis once claims against the Canadian company are resolved.

An invention company that accused a Mitsubishi affiliate of stealing one of its semiconductor designs more than a decade ago has filed for bankruptcy, saying its debts could top the amount the company agreed to pay in a recent settlement, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The inventor, Grail Semiconductor Inc., said in bankruptcy-court documents that it has settled its 2007 lawsuit against Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA, Inc., over the semiconductor design but declined to state how much money it expects to receive. The two sides settled their long-running dispute in October on the eve of a trial to determine a damage amount, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Sacramento, Calif. In 2012, a jury awarded Grail Semiconductor nearly $124 million in damages, though a judge later called for a new trial to revisit that amount.

A hedge fund founded by golfer Greg Norman is bidding $10 million for the bankrupt manufacturer of the Nabi children’s tablet, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Great White Shark Opportunity Fund LP, a hedge fund founded by the golfer in 2013, made an 11th-hour offer on Wednesday for Fuhu Inc., topping an initial offer from children’s retail giant Mattel Inc. The tablet maker selected the fund, an investment arm of Norman’s sprawling Great White Shark Enterprises, lead bidder for its business at a hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. The fund has also agreed to finance Fuhu’s bankruptcy case with a bankruptcy financing package.

Pandora Media Inc. said yesterday that it has bought bankrupt subscription music service Rdio Inc. for $75 million, a day after it struck deals with the music industry’s biggest rights licensing groups, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Pandora signed two separate multiyear agreements with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and Broadcast Music Inc. to access their combined catalogs of more than 20 million musical works.