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RadioShack Corp. is preparing for a bankruptcy filing and is in talks with Sprint Corp. to sell leases on some of its stores to the wireless carrier, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The court restructuring would allow RadioShack to emerge with a leaner business after a migration of consumers to the Internet left it with 11 straight quarterly losses and depleted its cash. The company would file for bankruptcy protection as early as the first week of February. Under the developing plan, RadioShack would seek to complete a bankruptcy reorganization with 2,000 to 3,000 stores, compared with the more than 4,000 it has now. The company also has been reaching out to potential lenders for a loan that would finance its operations during court proceedings.

A U.S. bankruptcy judge told Texas power giant Energy Future Holdings yesterday that it can move ahead on auctioning off its transmission arm, Oncor, the Dallas Morning News reported today. Judge Christopher Sontchi set the deadline for opening bids for March 2. The process is expected to stretch through the summer and attract some of the largest players in the Texas power industry. EFH filed for bankruptcy in April, seeking protection from $40 billion in debt largely amassed during a 2007 leveraged buyout by private equity firms KKR & Co. and TPG. EFH announced it was putting Oncor up for auction in August after Hunt and NextEra offered competing bids for the company. EFH CFO Paul Keglevic put the value of NextEra’s bid at $18 billion. In November, Sontchi put a halt to the process, telling EFH it was moving too quickly and had failed to work with creditors. Tuesday the power company filed a motion arguing it had carried out the judge’s orders and requested that the auction process resume.

A judge on Wednesday said U.S. Coal Corp. could put half the company's eastern Kentucky coal operations up for sale at an auction next month, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Tracey Wise approved the request, which allows U.S. coal to sell its Central Appalachia division at a Feb. 20 auction. The company has said that the division, with 24.4 million tons of coal reserves, is expected to lose money as mining costs increase and the coal-market weakens.

Teen fashion retailer Deb Shops on Wednesday won court approval to launch going-out-of-business sales that will culminate with the closing of nearly 300 stores, the Wall Street Journal reported today. An auction on Tuesday ended in a deal with liquidators Hilco Merchant Resources LLC and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners LLC, which will sell off the final inventory, furniture, fixtures and equipment, said Laura Davis Jones, a lawyer for the company. Arguments between the company and the liquidators in advance of the auction ended with an agreement that the liquidators will pay 82 percent of the cost of the inventory on hand, down from the original 98.25 percent they offered. The decrease translates into about $7 million less for creditors of the dissolving retailer, according to Derek Pitts, a financial adviser to Deb Shops. Judge Kevin Gross approved the auction results at a hearing yesterday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Deb Shops sought chapter 11 protection in December.

Revel AC Inc. won bankruptcy court approval to sell its shuttered Atlantic City, N.J., casino to the original bidder for $95.4 million, after an earlier sale at a higher price fell apart, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Gloria Burns said that she will enter an order authorizing the sale to Florida real estate investor Glenn Straub’s Polo North Country Club Inc. The company and Straub will have 30 days to close the deal once the order is entered. Revel was one of four casinos that closed last year after New Jersey’s gambling center saw its dominance fade amid growing competition from game rooms in neighboring states. Casino revenue in Atlantic City fell more than 40 percent to about $2.8 billion in 2013 from a peak of more than $5 billion in 2006. The company received court approval to scrap a $110 million sale to Brookfield Property Partners LP, the winner at auction. Brookfield walked away from the deal because it couldn’t arrange a cut in its electric bill. The casino owner turned to Straub, who came in second at the auction with a final offer of $95.4 million. The backup plan may not pan out either, as Straub has sought to lower the price.

A New Jersey company that makes protein powders and other muscle-building mixes has been sold out of bankruptcy for $10.1 million, the Wall Street Journal reported today. An affiliate of the U.K.-based Body Temple Ltd. won a heated auction for the nutritional supplement company built by ex-professional bodybuilder Rich Gaspari. The company, Gaspari Nutrition Inc., filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 14 after a slump in demand for its products, which sell online and at retailers like Vitamin Shoppe. The deal closed on Dec. 23, according to documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Trenton, N.J. Gaspari no longer owns the company but is expected to stay on staff. Annual sales for Gaspari Nutrition’s muscle-building formulas like “Aminolast,” “Super Pump,” and “MyoFusion Advanced” have fallen from a peak of $78 million in 2011, according to earlier court papers.

Bankrupt cancer vaccine maker Dendreon Corp. will move ahead with a court-supervised auction of the company without a stalking-horse bidder, Reuters reported yesterday. Dendreon filed for chapter 11 protection in November after its vaccine fell short of expectations, leaving the company unable to service debt taken on to ramp up manufacturing of its key drug, Provenge. The company had said that it planned to identify a stalking-horse bidder by yesterday and hold an auction on Feb. 3 for bidders who qualify by the end of January. Multiple potential bidders were interested in Dendreon, but the company's advisers decided they did not want to tie up millions of dollars in a break-up fee, said Ken Ziman, an attorney for Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom who represents Dendreon.

The back-up bidder for Revel AC Inc., now having the right to buy the shuttered Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino, wants the bankruptcy judge to cut the $95.4 million purchase price by $8.4 million in view of alleged improprieties in the auction process, Bloomberg News reported today. The purchase price for the casino’s assets should be $87 million, not the $95.4 million offered by Glenn Straub’s Polo North Country Club Inc. at an auction, Polo North said in a Dec. 24 court filing. Revel decided to proceed with a sale to Polo North after Brookfield Property Partners LP terminated a contract to buy the property for $110 million. When the bankruptcy court in Camden, N.J., approved the sale to Brookfield, the judge anointed Straub as the backup bidder to buy the project at his last offer of $95.4 million if the higher sale fell through, which it did. A hearing on the sale is scheduled for Jan. 5, when Straub wants the court to cut the purchase price.

A bankruptcy court has allowed defunct video streaming company Aereo Inc. to auction its TV streaming technology assets, Reuters reported on Friday. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan ruled on Wednesday that Aereo could sell its assets, after the company reached an agreement with broadcasters over the sale process. These broadcasters include CBS Corp., Comcast Corp.'s NBC, Walt Disney Co.'s ABC and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.'s Fox. Under the agreement, Aereo will allow the broadcasters to attend the auction of the assets and provide them a weekly update on the status of the sale process. Aereo filed for bankruptcy in November, five months after the U.S. Supreme Court said that it violated broadcasters' copyrights by capturing live and recorded programs on miniature antennas and transmitting them to subscribers for $8-$12 a month.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc. said that it is pursuing the sale of its sapphire furnaces and will pay former partner, Apple Inc., a portion of the cash it gets from the sale, Reuters reported yesterday. The furnaces were installed to make sapphire glass for Apple, which loaned GT Advanced $439 million for the project. GT Advanced, which invested heavily into increasing production of sapphire materials for Apple, blamed the supply agreement for forcing it into bankruptcy in October, a move that shocked investors and sent its stock plummeting more than 90 percent to under $1 before Nasdaq suspended the shares.