%1

Hostess Brands Inc. Chief Executive Officer Greg Rayburn said that stalking-horse bids for assets of the bankrupt maker of Twinkies and Wonder bread now total $858 million, with about $100 million more for sale, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Hostess, based in Irving, Texas, announced on Wednesday that it had chosen a joint offer from Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. as the lead bid for Twinkies and other cake brands in a March auction. Apollo and Metropoulos offered as much as $410 million for the Hostess snack-cake business, which also includes Dolly Madison brands, five bakeries and equipment. Leon Black’s Apollo, based in New York, managed $109.7 billion in assets as of Sept. 30.

Videogame maker THQ Inc. received court permission to split apart into the hands of the highest bidders from a bankruptcy auction that reaped nearly $72 million for the rights to such THQ titles as "Company of Heroes" and "Saints Row," Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath signed off on five purchase agreements that will give THQ a pool of money to pay off its debts before closing down its headquarters outside Los Angeles.

Hostess Brands Inc. said private equity firms Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. have set a baseline offer of $410 million to buy the company's snack cake brands, which include Hostess Twinkies and Dolly Madison, Reuters reported yesterday. The stalking-horse bid by the private equity firms does not require Apollo and Metropoulos to assume any of Hostess Snacks' liabilities or other obligations. Hostess said yesterday that it would select the winning bidders for the assets of the bread and snack cake businesses at the conclusion of various auctions. The company has requested that the bankruptcy court in New York authorize it to proceed with an auction for the majority of the assets of the snack cake business on March 13.

Hostess Brands Inc., the bankrupt maker of Wonder Bread and Twinkies, picked the team of Apollo Global Management LLC and C. Dean Metropoulos & Co. as the lead bidder for its cake brands, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The offer becomes the stalking-horse bid for an auction of the cakes business that includes CupCakes, Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. Flowers Foods Inc., the Thomasville, Ga.-based owner of brands that include Nature’s Own and Tastykake, was earlier selected as the stalking-horse bidder for most of Hostess’s bread brands with a $360 million offer. Flowers is also the stalking-horse bidder for Hostess’s Beefsteak bread brand with a $30 million bid. That auction is scheduled for Feb. 28.

China's largest auto parts maker won U.S. government approval to buy bankrupt A123 Systems Inc., a maker of electric car batteries, despite warnings by some lawmakers that the deal would transfer sensitive technology developed with U.S. government money, Reuters reported yesterday. The sale of the lithium-ion battery maker to a U.S. unit of Wanxiang Group was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government body led by the Treasury secretary. Last month, Wanxiang's U.S. unit agreed to pay $257 million for A123's automotive battery business and related assets in a bankruptcy auction, beating U.S. rival Johnson Controls Inc. of Milwaukee.

Preparing for a possible legal fight over the Sacramento Kings, the bankruptcy trustee who controls 7 percent of the team plans to bring in "special litigation counsel" to pursue claims that minority owners are being denied the right to match the purchase offer from Seattle, the Sacramento Bee reported today. Trustee David Flemmer is preparing to auction the 7 percent share held by bankrupt developer Bob Cook in order to pay creditors' claims. The current majority stakeholder in the Kings, the Maloof family, agreed to sell its 65 percent controlling interest to a Seattle group led by hedge fund manager Chris Hansen. Preserving the legal right to match Hansen's offer would make the 7 percent share considerably more valuable, Flemmer said. A bankruptcy court hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday.

Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross cleared the way for solar panel parts maker Satcon Technology Corp. to speed up its auction process by two weeks after the company failed to find a lead bidder to set a floor price for its assets, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. Satcon sought to move up the auction after it failed to convince any of the 13 potential bidders who signed confidentiality agreements to put in a lead bid several weeks before the auction.

Hostess Brands Inc. said yesterday that it has selected stalking-horse bidders for its Drake's cake business and additional bread brands that will net the bankrupt bakery company more than $56 million, Reuters reported yesterday. McKee Foods, maker of Little Debbie snack cakes, is offering roughly $27 million for Drake's, which makes Devil Dogs, Ring Dings and Yodels. United States Bakery Inc., also known as Franz Family Bakery, is expected to bid about the same amount for Hostess bread brands including Sweetheart, Eddy's, Standish Farms and Grandma Emilie's.

Hostess Brands Inc. plans to submit an agreement next week to sell its Drake's cake business as part of its bankruptcy reorganization, Reuters reported on Friday. Heather Lennox, an attorney for Hostess, told a bankruptcy court that Hostess was also in advanced discussions with a number of parties for the remainder of its snack business, which includes Twinkies. Lennox also told the court that Hostess expects to file an agreement for the other brands in the near term. It was not immediately clear who the agreements would be with, but private equity firm C. Dean Metropoulos said earlier this week that it was working on a deal for some Hostess brands.

Video game publisher THQ that only five years ago had a market value of more than $2 billion sold most of its assets at a bankruptcy auction that closed on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday. Games in development and production studios owned by the Agoura Hills, Calif.-based company were bought by a variety of competitors for a total of $72 million, according to court documents. That exceeded a stalking-horse bid THQ had from private investment firm Clearlake Capital Group, which offered to take the entire company private for $60 million.