%1

The historic Sparrows Point steel mill was sold to liquidator Hilco Industrial for about $72 million on Tuesday, Reuters reported yesterday. The 120-year-old Baltimore, Md., mill, where steel for the Golden Gate Bridge was forged, was one of three steelmaking assets put up for sale by bankrupt RG Steel LLC. The company was the fourth-largest U.S. producer of flat-rolled steel when it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on May 31 due to rising costs and weak demand.

Opening bids for Eastman Kodak Co.'s digital patents came in far below the $2.6 billion the company said that they could be worth, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Kodak received two bids from investor groups pitting Silicon Valley giants Apple Inc. and Google Inc. against each other ahead of an auction set for Wednesday. The bids from the two teams came in around $150 million to $250 million. The low starting offers mean Kodak will need the consortiums to be extra aggressive if it is to reap enough to repay creditors and have some left over for reorganizing its operations. At a bankruptcy court hearing in January, a lawyer for Kodak said that the company thought the patents were worth $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion. Read more. (Subscription required):
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100008723963904435171045775735513867181…

In related news, Judge Allan L. Gropper yesterday cleared Eastman Kodak Co. to pay up to $4.5 million in bonuses to 12 top executives and senior managers, along with a one-time cash payment of up to $1.5 million to its chief operating officer, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Co-President and Chief Operating Officer Laura G. Quatela can earn between $600,000 and $1.5 million based on how much money Kodak raises in an upcoming auction of its patent portfolio and how quickly such a sale closes. Read more:
http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2012/08/06/judge-clears-kodak-to-…

Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath let LSP Energy open its bankruptcy auction for its Mississippi power plant with a $249 million lead bid from South Mississippi Electric Power Association after rival buyers argued that the bid's provisions would have made it harder for them to challenge it, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. Rival bidder TPF II LP, a private equity fund that invests in energy and power assets and is affiliated with independent power producer Tenaska Inc ., had protested the lead offer because it would have paid $7.5 million breakup fee to South Mississippi Electric Power for kicking off the auction with a $249 million bid.

Private-equity firm Advent International on Sunday said it agreed to buy a majority interest in the bedding company that owns the Simmons mattress brand and licenses the Serta brand, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The price of the transaction wasn't disclosed, but on Friday Advent was close to a deal for National Bedding's owners Ares Management, and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan put the mattress company up for sale earlier this year in an auction run by Barclays. Under the plan announced Sunday, Ares Management and the teachers pension fund will retain a significant equity stake. The transaction is expected to be completed by the fourth quarter of 2012, subject to various closing conditions. Private-equity firms Bain Capital and Berkshire Partners had also been bidding as part of the auction.

Eastman Kodak Co. posted a wider second-quarter loss as it prepares for a crucial auction in which it hopes to sell more than 1,100 patents to help repay its bankruptcy creditors, Reuters reported on Friday. The Rochester, N.Y.-based company said its quarterly loss increased 67 percent to $299 million, or $1.10 per share, from $179 million, or 67 cents, a year earlier. Excluding costs related to its reorganization, the second-quarter loss totaled $139 million, Kodak said. The case is In re Eastman Kodak Co., U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.

Knight Capital Group's Chief Executive Tom Joyce is considering bankruptcy reorganization and a sale of assets, according to reports by Fox Business Network, Reuters reported yesterday. A trading glitch with Knight's software roiled markets and wiped out $440 million of the firm's capital, forcing it to seek new funding as its shares plunged more than 80 percent in two days. A number of brokerages and broker-dealers have suspended routing trading orders through Knight. Among them are TD Ameritrade, Scott Trade, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard Group, E*Trade and Pershing LLC, a division of BNY Mellon.

Unsecured creditors are protesting the sale process lined up by SP Newsprint Holdings LLC, saying their "greatest fear"---that the company is focused solely on benefiting its lenders---has come true, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. SP Newsprint wants to place its assets on the auction block with a $145 million deal from a group of top-ranking lenders kicking off the bidding, a sale process it said has to move swiftly because the company is running out of money.

Bids for patents being auctioned by Eastman Kodak Co. could become less generous now that the company has lost a key intellectual-property case against Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd., the Wall Street Journal reported today. The International Trade Commission dismissed the onetime film giant's complaint against the iPhone and BlackBerry makers late Friday, after concluding that a patent that has been highly lucrative for Kodak was invalid. While the patent — governing the way images are previewed by digital cameras — is only one of 1,100 Kodak has put on the block, the high-profile loss could make it harder for the company to raise the billions of dollars it is counting on to help it emerge from chapter 11 as a viable company. The loss at the ITC comes at a crucial time for Kodak, which just kicked off the much-anticipated patent sale this month. Bidders are coming up with offers now, and the auction itself is expected during early August. Kodak has said the patents on the block could be valued at $2.6 billion.

The U.S. government is speeding up efforts to sell billions of dollars of remaining assets that were acquired in the controversial bailout of the financial system four years ago, according to investors and government officials, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The Treasury Department and Federal Reserve are planning to sell assets ranging from bank shares to troubled mortgage securities as part of a final push to extricate the government from the aid doled out in the financial meltdown. Some of the biggest names on Wall Street—including Blackstone Group LP, Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co., Fortress Investment Group LLC and Oaktree Capital Management LP—are eyeing some of the assets.

Syms Corp., the bankrupt discount clothing chain, and its Filene's Basement LLC are seeking court permission to sell a Miami property at auction with an opening offer of $4.5 million, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Syms will ask a judge to approve bidding procedures for the proposed auction at a hearing set for July 31, according to court documents filed on Tuesday. The company plans to hold the auction on Aug. 14, followed by a hearing to approve the sale on Aug. 16, according to court papers. All bids would be due by Aug. 13.