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U.S. regulators asked for public input yesterday on whether to assign licenses for airwaves held by LightSquared Inc. to the reorganized wireless company now emerging from bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The Federal Communications Commission asked for comments beginning July 1 and concluding July 20 on LightSquared’s request to assign the licenses to the reorganized entity under a plan approved by a bankruptcy court. The plan would shift control from Harbinger Capital Partners Funds, controlled by Philip Falcone, to JPMorgan Chase & Co., Fortress Investment Group LLC and Jeffrey Aronson and Mark Gallogly, through Centerbridge Partners LP, the FCC said.

Turnaround efforts continue for Australia's NewSat Ltd., according to Ken Coleman, the lawyer representing insolvency officials trying to hold the company together after it was forced to terminate a contract with Lockheed Martin Corp., Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Lenders pushed NewSat into court-supervised insolvency proceedings in Australia earlier this year after it defaulted on loans. Cost overruns on the Jabiru-1 satellite project and management issues were also cited as the reasons for NewSat's financial problems. Administrators put in charge of NewSat sought U.S. court aid to save the construction contract for the Jabiru-1. However, the money didn't come through in time, and last week, NewSat surrendered its rights under the contract with Lockheed Martin. The Australian insolvency proceeding will be the main forum of action for NewSat's turnaround bid, the U.S. court said Friday, in a formal recognition order signed by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein. The recognition order was uncontested, and it was the main goal of NewSat's chapter 15 bankruptcy filing, which followed shortly after the Australian insolvency action commenced. Read more. (Subscription required.)

For more further analysis of chapter 15 proceedings, be sure to pick up a copy of ABI’s Chapter 15 for Foreign Debtors. 

LightSquared Inc.’s bankruptcy plan gives hedge funds that invested in the broadband company a leg up while blocking telecommunications firms from competing with it, a fund owned by Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen said in court papers appealing the plan, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. LightSquared’s reorganization was drafted by “sophisticated hedge funds that have taken a commercial bet that the spectrum owned by LightSquared might one day be usable and therefore worth many billions of dollars,” Ergen’s fund said in its filing on Monday. The fund, SP Special Opportunities LLC, is challenging specific wording in the plan that bars creditors from taking actions that could impede LightSquared’s ability to get a license for the use of its airwaves.

Aereo Inc. won bankruptcy court approval of a settlement to pay CBS Corp. and other broadcasters $950,000 to resolve copyright claims totaling more than $99 million as the defunct online-TV service backed by Barry Diller winds down, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The deal, paying less than a penny on the dollar to creditors, will save Aereo from spending the rest of its dwindling cash on drawn-out litigation, Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane ruled yesterday. The settlement, which was backed by all the broadcasters, gives them less money than the lawyers and other bankruptcy experts are getting from the case. It also leaves Aereo with $811,000 to pay non-broadcast creditors with claims totaling $7.5 million.

Federal bankruptcy watchdogs have asked that an independent examiner be appointed to oversee spending in the bankruptcy of GT Advanced Technologies Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported today. U.S. Trustee William Harrington this week asked Bankruptcy Judge Henry Boroff to appoint a third party to sort through the bills — from law firms and other advisers — that are expected to arrive as part of GT Advanced’s case. The company’s lead bankruptcy lawyer, Luc Despins, said the firm won't oppose the motion. GT Advanced filed for chapter 11 protection in October 2014 after plunging into debt in an unsuccessful bid to produce smartphone-screen material for Apple Inc. The company decoupled from Apple by way of a settlement approved by the court in December 2014 and attempted a recovery as a manufacturer of furnaces and other industrial equipment.

NII Holdings, Inc. yesterday announced that it completed the sale of its Mexican operations to AT&T for an aggregate purchase price of $1.875 billion, according to a press release. After deducting Nextel Mexico's outstanding indebtedness net of its cash balance and applying estimates of other specified purchase price adjustments at closing, NII received $1.448 billion of net proceeds, including $187.5 million of cash placed in escrow to secure specified indemnity obligations. NII used $350.5 million of the net proceeds from the sale to repay in full the outstanding principal and accrued interest due under its debtor-in-possession loan that it borrowed in March 2015. A portion of the net proceeds from the transaction will be used to support NII's operations in Brazil and the remainder will be used to fund distributions to specified creditors, pursuant to the proposed plan of reorganization in the chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings of NII and certain of its subsidiaries, that is pending before the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

LightSquared’s bankruptcy has hit another milestone: $2 billion in losses since Philip Falcone’s wireless venture filed for chapter 11 protection in May 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In a bankruptcy court filing on Wednesday, LightSquared said that it lost $72.7 million in March, bringing its total loss since filing for bankruptcy to $2.07 billion. LightSquared’s biggest expense in March was interest on some of its debt: $41 million for the month and $1.22 billion since the bankruptcy.

Wireless venture LightSquared Inc., emerging from bankruptcy, asked U.S. regulators to clear the way for its renewed quest to set up a mobile broadband service covering the U.S., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Regulators should transfer airwaves licenses to the entity to be known as New LightSquared, a company subsidiary said in an April 6 filing posted yesterday on the website of the Federal Communications Commission. LightSquared last month won U.S. court permission to exit bankruptcy protection, where it has been stalled since 2012 when regulators said its wireless broadband service would interfere with GPS global-positioning navigation technology. The new company will have $1.25 billion in operating funds to help “make full use of its spectrum to provide existing and innovative services,” according to the FCC filing.

A lawsuit accusing hedge fund manager Philip A. Falcone and his Harbinger Capital Partners of misleading investors about the firm’s stake in LightSquared Inc. was dismissed by a U.S. judge, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan today dismissed the remaining counts in the suit, after sharply narrowing it in a ruling in 2013. The investors claimed Harbinger acquired an interest in LightSquared, formerly known as SkyTerra Communications Inc., without adequately warning them of the risks. Harbinger ultimately owned 60 percent of LightSquared, which was developing a high-speed wireless broadband network before it filed for bankruptcy in 2012.