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New York City Opera, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month after years of management missteps, won court approval to auction some assets, including costumes, wigs, props and about 60 musical instruments, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The public sale was approved on Tuesday by Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane. The auctioneer, Tiger Remarketing Servicing LLC, will get 10 percent of the proceeds from the sale, which also includes the opera’s gift shop inventory of CDs and books and a harp at Lincoln Center in New York. Stock scenery, tools, stage curtains and prop fabric at the opera’s facility in New Windsor, New York, will be auctioned, as will computers and office furniture from the opera’s office on Broad Street in Manhattan, according to a Nov. 6 request to approve the sale.

The stage is set for a Dec. 17 auction for Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, one of the smallest gambling operations on the Atlantic City Boardwalk, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. While a stalking-horse bidder has not yet emerged, an affiliate of Northlight Capital Partners has something of a pole position as lender of bankruptcy financing that may run as high as $15 million. The casino, owned by Colony Capital LLC, filed for chapter 11 protection Nov. 6.

A bidding war has broken out over the rights to a pair of games created by shuttered videogame developer TimeGate Studios Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported today. Hedge fund CNH Partners, an affiliate of Greenwich, Conn.’s AQR Capital Partners, said that it made a higher offer for the rights to two of TimeGate first-person shooter titles — “Section 8” and the unreleased “Minimum.” According to court papers, CNH teamed with game developer Digital Tribe Games to offer $50,000 in cash plus a 25 percent royalty on the two games, topping a winning bid by France’s Atari SA. SouthPeak Interactive Corp., which won a multimillion-dollar arbitration award against TimeGate in their dispute over “Section 8,” also says its offer — $40,000 and a 50 percent royalty — is better than Atari’s, which tried to unload some of its U.S. assets in bankruptcy court earlier this year. The bankruptcy trustee winding down TimeGate has endorsed the Atari bid, but the hedge fund is asking a bankruptcy judge to reopen the sale process and to schedule a live auction.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc., the U.S. grocery chain owned by Tesco Plc, canceled its proposed auction after receiving no offers to compete with a bid from an affiliate of billionaire Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The company will seek bankruptcy court approval on Nov. 22 to sell virtually all of its assets to the affiliate of Los Angeles-based Yucaipa, according to court documents filed on Nov. 15. Under the proposed deal, a Tesco affiliate would lend the Yucaipa unit $120 million to help finance the acquisition, according to court papers. Tesco would get warrants to buy as much as 10 percent of the reorganized chain’s equity, while Fresh & Easy would get a 22.5 percent stake. Yucaipa has agreed to take over about 150 of the markets along with the production facility in Riverside, California, where the company produces meals under the Fresh & Easy brand. Fresh & Easy operates 167 stores in the western U.S.

Puerto Rico’s El Vocero newspaper could soon get a new owner that would preserve its voice on the 3.6 million-resident island, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. A trustee in charge of the newspaper’s bankruptcy case has proposed to hold a public auction on Nov. 22. Court documents show that the newspaper already has a $1.9 million offer from an investor group that would continue to operate the paper, which publishes columns by Ricky Rosselló, a rumored aspiring political candidate whose political advocacy group is pushing for the island to become a U.S. state. Challenging offers will have to start at $2 million, according to court papers. The trustee who’s handling the public auction said that the newspaper’s sale needs to be finalized by Nov. 30 to avoid a shutdown, according to court papers.

Advantage Rent a Car is seeking court approval to zoom through bankruptcy with a fast-track auction at which its bankruptcy lender will start the bidding, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The car-rental chain on Tuesday filed court papers asking court permission to let it sell its assets to Catalyst Capital Group Inc., subject to higher bids at a Dec. 9 auction.

Sixteen years after Joe Francis founded Girls Gone Wild, a team of bankruptcy professionals put in charge of the franchise's holding company by a federal judge has begun to look for buyers for the business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The Los Angeles-based company, which made a name for itself by filming impaired co-eds on spring break, distributes its porn through pay-per-view channels, DVDs and the Internet. The attorneys, under direction of the company’s chapter 11 trustee and former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent R. Todd Neilson, have already approached officials at adult film-giant Vivid Entertainment, though executive Bill Asher said that he’s not interested for now. Attorneys have said in court papers that they plan to market the brand to bidders who might eventually compete at a bankruptcy auction. Lawyers haven’t put a price on the Girls Gone Wild franchise yet. Francis said earlier this year that the Girls Gone Wild brand is worth more than $80 million, though court papers show that its holding company posted a profit of a little more than $500,000 on $2.4 million in sales since its February bankruptcy filing.

Capitol Bancorp Ltd. investors who fear the bank-holding company's sale of its banks to Wilbur Ross's Talmer Bancorp will leave them empty-handed want a bankruptcy judge to slow down the deal so rival bidders can make an offer, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Lawyers for the committee representing Capitol's unsecured creditors on Monday objected to the rules governing the sale, claiming that they'll be left holding the bag if the deal proceeds as proposed. The committee wants a bankruptcy judge to extend the timeline governing the sale to give other potential bidders sufficient time to formulate their bids.

The owners of the Houston Rockets basketball team are siding with Comcast Corp. against Houston Astros owner Jim Crane over the fate of the struggling sports channel that broadcasts the games of both teams, saying that a bankruptcy sale or reorganization is the best way for Comcast SportsNet Houston to survive, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Houston Rockets attorneys said in court papers filed on Monday that the network's proposed bankruptcy case, which the Astros will fight to dismiss at a hearing next week, could allow it to reorganize and continue to "provide the fans in the city of Houston and its surrounding region with the sports programming that they desire." The filing breaks the basketball team's silence over the management dispute within the network that escalated to its involuntary bankruptcy filing on Sept. 27, which was filed by Comcast affiliates that are owed more than $100 million. Comcast wants to buy the network through a bankruptcy auction and has said its offer would be high enough to provide some compensation to the Astros and Rockets.

Capitol Bancorp, which has been in bankruptcy since August 2012, will sell its stake in the remaining banks it owns in Michigan, Indiana, Nevada and New Mexico, the Lansing (Michigan) State Journal reported today. The bank development company, which sold its interest in Lansing-based Capitol National Bank earlier this year, said on Monday that it is selling its common stock in the banks to Troy, Michigan-based Talmer Bancorp Inc. The deal involves the Bank of Las Vegas, Indiana Community Bank, Michigan Commerce Bank and Sunrise Bank of Albuquerque, Lansing-based Capitol Bancorp said.