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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which is selling assets to pay creditors another $32 billion by 2016, asked a judge to sign an order barring governments from taking taxes on any deals it strikes with buyers, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Such an order would "restate" an immunity from taxes that exists under a court-approved liquidation plan, Lehman said. Potential buyers want assurances that Lehman’s property transactions are free from government intervention, according to the court filing.

Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn rejected a bid by former MF Global customers to depose the collapsed brokerage's former chief, Jon Corzine, Reuters reported yesterday. Judge Glenn said that the Commodity Customer Coalition, which had sought permission to question Corzine and other former MF Global insiders, lacked standing because it is not a direct creditor in the case. The coalition, a grassroots group led by Chicago-based commodities trader James Koutoulas, bills itself as representing the interests of thousands of traders whose accounts at MF Global were frozen when the company went under. But the coalition itself is merely a "'watchdog' entity with its own independent goals," hoping to depose Corzine "in furtherance of its own interests" rather than those of the MF Global estate, Judge Glenn said in his decision.

A group of LightSquared Inc.'s lenders reiterated its desire to go after Phil Falcone and Harbinger Capital Partners for a pre-bankruptcy loan made to the wireless satellite company, making it clear that the troubled venture's officers and directors will not be a target of the lawsuit, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported yesterday. In a bankruptcy court filing on Friday, the lenders said that while they still want a court to let them challenge a July 2011 loan Harbinger made to LightSquared, they do not "at this time" seek any action against LightSquared itself. In a Dec. 12 filing, LightSquared said that it was concerned that its officers and directors would be targets of the suit.

As the board of the American International Group weighs whether to join a shareholder lawsuit against the United States government, several lawmakers have a simple message for the bailed-out insurer: Don't do it, the New York Times DealBook blog reported yesterday. With AIG having fully repaid its $182 billion bailout only weeks ago, the prospect of the company trying to clawback some of the $22 billion in profit that its rescue generated for shareholders does not sit right with several members of Congress. In a letter to AIG's chairman, Robert S. Miller, three Democratic lawmakers sternly urged the company to avoid "rubbing salt in the wounds" of taxpayers still furious about needing to bail out a public company. "AIG became the poster company for Wall Street greed, fiscal mismanagement, and executive bonuses - the taxpayer and economy be damned," Reps. Peter Welch (Vt.), Michael Capuano (Mass.) and Luis V. Gutierrez (Ill.) wrote in the letter.

When a former Dewey & LeBoeuf partner alleged in August that Citi Private Bank defrauded him by hiding the now-defunct firm's true financial state when Citi loaned him money to cover his capital contribution obligations, it turns out he was not the first person to publicly lodge such accusations at Citi, American Law Daily reported today. In the months following the March 2011 demise of Washington, D.C.-based litigation shop Howrey, a pair of former partners of that firm sued Citibank and one of its executives in San Francisco state court claiming that the bank had duped them by concealing Howrey's financial instability as it was arranging capital loan agreements with the two lawyers. Unless a settlement is reached, that suit is scheduled to go to trial in March. If it does, filings made in the 16 months since the litigation began that depict a firm relying on partners' money to stay afloat and a compliant bank keeping the scheme going.

Fresh from paying back a $182 billion bailout, the board of American International Group Inc. will meet tomorrow to consider joining a $25 billion shareholder lawsuit against the government, the New York Times DealBook blog reported today. The lawsuit contends that the onerous nature of the rescue - the taking of what became a 92 percent stake in the company, the deal's high interest rates and the funneling of billions to the insurer's Wall Street clients - deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for "public use, without just compensation." Maurice R. Greenberg, AIG's former chief executive, who remains a major investor in the company, filed the lawsuit in 2011 on behalf of fellow shareholders. He has since urged AIG to join the case, a move that could nudge the government into settlement talks.

The U.S. Trustee Program wants a bankruptcy court to strip law firm Kaye Scholer LLP and financial adviser Capstone of more than $10 million they earned through the bankruptcy of investment management firm GSC Group Inc., Reuters reported yesterday. The firms covered up key business relationships that may have served to inflate their fees, according to court papers filed on Friday by the U.S. Trustee Program. GSC, founded by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc partner Alfred Eckert III, declared bankruptcy in August 2010, hampered by a liquidity squeeze and declining asset values brought on by global recession. The case in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan culminated in the 2011 sale of GSC's assets to lender Black Diamond Capital Management.

A hotel owner that recently came out of bankruptcy is rekindling a lawsuit against Marriott International Inc., saying that the company secretly helped the hotel's employees form a union that helped tip the Manhattan hotel owner into chapter 11, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. In its amended complaint now recognized as the official complaint of record with New York State Supreme Court, lawyers for Madison 92nd Street Associates LLC said that Marriott officials indicated they would not push for the workers of the hotel to unionize, but then helped them do just that. The move, Madison 92nd said, led to higher costs for the company and eventually made them raise the prices for their rooms, which directly benefited competing properties in New York owned by Marriott that were selling for lower prices.

U.S. District Judge James Zagel ruled that INTL FCStone must return $15.6 million to the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Sentinel Management Group because other former clients were not equitably repaid money they had invested in the failed futures brokerage, Reuters reported yesterday. FCStone, a New York-based commodities brokerage with many farmers as clients, has received about 70 percent of the money it had invested with Sentinel, while other former customers have received back roughly 35 percent, said trustee Frederick Grede. Grede had asked Judge Zagel to allow creditors to receive more balanced payouts. Sentinel collapsed in 2007 after it allegedly moved customer funds from protected accounts to other accounts so they could be used as collateral for loans to Sentinel's own trading operations.

The former head of defunct packaging firm Radnor Holdings Corp. is suing the law firm that led it through its 2006 bankruptcy and the hedge fund that acquired its assets, saying that they colluded to provide the fund, Tennenbaum Capital Partners, with a $100 million windfall, Reuters reported yesterday. Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, along with Tennenbaum and several legal and financial advisers, were named as defendants in a bankruptcy court complaint on Dec. 26. The plaintiff, former Radnor Chief Executive Michael Kennedy, said that he should be repaid more than $75 million and his company's 2006 sale to Tennenbaum voided. He claimed that Skadden and Tennenbaum concealed a longstanding business relationship and conspired to make sure Radnor wound up in Tennenbaum's hands.