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The bankruptcy sale of Endicott Interconnect will now be an open bidding process after the company that submitted the initial offer bowed out of sole contention to make one of Broome County, N.Y.'s largest employers solvent, WBNG (Binghamton, N.Y.) reported today. Attorneys for Integrian Holdings — which is owned by a minority shareholder of EIT — told a federal judge yesterday that it will withdraw its position as a stalking-horse bidder. Attorneys also said that Integrian generated a lot of "heat" for those actions, although they did not explain further. The bidding process will now reopen, and a final decision could be handed down by late September. The bid deadline is set for Sept. 19, and the auction is scheduled for Sept. 24. There will be a sale hearing scheduled for 1 p.m. Sept. 26 at the federal courthouse.

Orchard Supply Hardware Stores yesterday won bankruptcy court approval to sell its West Coast chain of hardware and garden stores to Lowe's Cos. for $205 million, Dow Jones Business News reported yesterday. Hon. Christopher Sontchi signed off on the Lowe's offer, which Orchard had in hand when it sought chapter 11 protection in June. Lowe's plans to operate the 72 Orchard stores it acquires as a standalone business, and the stores — located in California and Oregon — will keep the Orchard name. Orchard was to hold an auction earlier this month, but it didn't receive any rival bids.

Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley ruled yesterday that the Archdiocese of Milwaukee (Wis.) must release to its bankruptcy creditors documents that could show whether a federal judge, who sided with the church on a key issue involving its cemeteries, might have had a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported today. Kelley issued the ruling after a brief hearing yesterday, stressing that it was not a commentary on U.S. District Judge Rudolph T. Randa’s July 29 ruling or whether he should have recused himself from the case. Judge Randa ruled last week that forcing the church to use even some of the more than $50 million it set aside in a trust for the perpetual care of cemeteries to pay its bankruptcy debts — primarily sex abuse settlements — would substantially burden its free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and a 1993 law aimed at protecting religious freedom. Judge Randa’s ruling, which overturned an earlier decision by Judge Kelley, was a key victory for the archdiocese in that it eliminated one of the last major assets available for a settlement with sex abuse victims who filed claims in the bankruptcy.

The owner of struggling Trinity Coal Corp. has put up $15 million to stop the bankruptcy auction process for the company’s Appalachian coal mining operations — a halt that buys Trinity Coal executives time to negotiate a bankruptcy exit plan with its lenders, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Trinity Coal’s owner, India-based steel and energy conglomerate Essar Global Ltd., agreed to spend $15 million to keep the company operating and push back a series of auction deadlines required by Trinity Coal's lenders, according to court papers. The deal pushes back Trinity Coal's bankruptcy loan-repayment deadline to Nov. 8.

The manufacturer of Hoover and Dirt Devil brand vacuum cleaners was the winning bidder for rival Oreck in a bankruptcy auction on Monday, offering at least $24.4 million to outbid members of the Oreck family, Reuters reported yesterday. The bankrupt pioneer of the upright vacuum went on the auction block with an opening bid that included about $14.5 million in cash from a group led by Tom Oreck, a former chief executive of the company founded by his father. The total value of Tom Oreck's bid, which included various assumed liabilities, was estimated in court documents at about $22 million. The details of the winning bid will be made public before a hearing to approve the sale, which is scheduled for July 16.

ATP Oil & Gas Corp. says it is still in a cash emergency and needs to sell a production payment for $15 million in order to avoid falling apart before a projected lender takeover in August, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, who is presiding over the Gulf of Mexico drilling operation's chapter 11 bankruptcy, has yet to grant final approval on the sale of ATP's most valuable operations, the Telemark and Clipper projects, to senior lenders. Judge Isgur today will take another look at the deal and at ATP's new request to sell the production payment.

An investment group led by actor Patrick Dempsey has completed its $9.2 million acquisition of Tully's Coffee chain, which filed for chapter 11 protection last fall, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Dempsey's group, Global Baristas, won an auction of Tully's assets in federal bankruptcy court in January, beating out a combined rival bid of about $10.6 million from AgriNurture Inc. and Starbucks Corp. Starbucks had wanted to buy about half of Tully's 47 shops in Washington and California and turn them into Starbucks stores, while the rest of the company would keep the Tully's name under the ownership of AgriNurture, which is based in the Philippines. Global Baristas has said that it intends to continue operating Tully's and retain its more than 500 employees.

Lenders looking to buy ATP Oil & Gas Corp.'s deep-water drilling assets have increased the cash portion of their $690 million bid, a move that could appease the bankruptcy judge overseeing ATP's chapter 11 case, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a court filing on Monday, lenders led by an affiliate of Credit Suisse Group AG said they would pay $55 million in cash for the assets—up from $45 million—on top of $645 million in debt forgiveness.

Revstone Industries LLC has received a $54.4 million offer from a Shiloh Industries Inc. subsidiary for its auto parts manufacturing business and is seeking court permission to sell those assets, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Contech Castings LLC, a 60-year-old automotive die-casting business that is an indirect subsidiary of Revstone, isn't among the assets the company placed in chapter 11 and isn't part of the bankruptcy estate, Revstone said in court documents filed Tuesday. Nevertheless, Revstone is seeking bankruptcy court approval of the sale, "out of an abundance of caution," it said. Although the Contech sale is technically outside of Revstone's chapter 11 process, it is part of a larger plan, Revstone said, that will ultimately maximize the value of Revstone's assets, for the benefit of both Contech and Revstone creditors. That plan also includes the sale of another affiliate that isn't in chapter 11 called Metavation LLC, implementing customer support agreements and reaching settlements with claimants including the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., it said.

U.S electric car maker Coda Automotive has won bankruptcy court approval to sell its assets for $25 million to a group of lenders led by Fortress Investment Group, Reuters reported yesterday. Under the deal, Fortress group will pay $1.7 million in cash, and the remainder will come by way of a "credit bid," in which Fortress will bid for the assets of Coda using debt owed instead of cash. Coda said in its May 1 bankruptcy petition that it is exiting the car business to focus on the development and sale of energy storage systems through its subsidiary Coda Energy. The case is In re Coda Holdings Inc., Case No. 13-11153, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware.