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Bahrain-based Arcapita is aiming to build a new asset management firm with a debut local deal in the logistics, education or health care sector as the company recovers from the first chapter 11 bankruptcy process undertaken by a Gulf Arab entity, Reuters reported on Friday. The Islamic investment firm emerged from chapter 11 on Sept. 17 after seeking court protection in March 2012 under hedge fund pressure ahead of the repayment of a $1.1 billion Islamic loan. Under the court-approved restructuring plan, Arcapita is to be split into two entities: one will hold the existing company assets as they are sold down to pay creditors, while a second will be in charge of the process's management. The latter entity hopes to rebuild itself going forward, said Atif Abdulmalik, chief executive of Arcapita, aiming to raise $100 million of new equity from original Arcapita investors by January to help fund dealmaking.

J.C. Penney Co. moved to raise as much as $1 billion by selling stock, boosting its cushion of cash ahead of what could be a hard-fought holiday season, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Penney said yesterday that it would sell up to 96.6 million shares in a public offering underwritten by Goldman Sachs. The department store chain is seeing some improvement in sales but is still facing concerns from creditors, who worry that the retailer's road ahead is uncertain. Companies that finance clothing deliveries to Penney are making it more expensive for suppliers to do business with the retailer. Rosenthal & Rosenthal, a "factoring" company that pays suppliers up front then collects later from Penney, raised the surcharge it imposes for Penney suppliers to 2 percent from 1 percent and is now only financing 70-80 percent of the goods that are delivered. Previously, the New York-based firm had financed the full value of the goods.

Exide Technologies Inc. wants to keep control of its chapter 11 case through next summer as the battery maker continues to work toward a plan to reorganize and exit bankruptcy, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Exide said in a court filing on Wednesday that it wants until May 31, 2014, to file a reorganization plan without the threat of rival proposals and until July 24, 2014, to solicit votes on such a plan. Without the approval, Exide's exclusivity periods would end on Oct. 8 and Dec. 7 of this year.

New York City Opera’s board voted Thursday to file for chapter 11 protection and dissolve the company if it doesn’t raise $7 million by Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The storied company, which launched the careers of stars such as Beverly Sills and Plácido Domingo, hasn’t yet come close to reaching its emergency fund-raising goal of $7 million, a figure the company had said that it must raise by the end of the month. The emergency capital campaign, which targeted a total of $20 million by the end of the year, came two years after the company’s dire financial straits prompted it to cut its budget, shrink its season and leave its longtime home at Lincoln Center. Those measures, which led to a bruising labor fight, allowed City Opera to balance its budget for the first time in more than a decade, but left the company still struggling with cash-flow problems.

FriendFinder Networks Inc., the bankrupt owner of Penthouse magazine, was sued by a company that has gathered movies, photos and other works created by the publication’s founder, the late Bob Guccione, over ownership rights of the artwork and property, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Guccione Collection LLC filed a lawsuit yesterday in bankruptcy court seeking a ruling that the posting and sale of the works online doesn’t violate FriendFinder’s intellectual property rights. Guccione Collection, headed by Jeremy Frommer, a financier and Wall Street veteran of more than two decades, was sent a notice demanding that it take down the material, according to the complaint.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the lender that lost almost $2 billion during Chrysler Group LLC’s 2009 bankruptcy, is now its chief adviser as the automaker’s two owners haggle over its value, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. JPMorgan will advise Chrysler in the event of its sale to majority shareholder, Fiat SpA. The bank was also listed this week as the lead underwriter of an initial public offering of Chrysler shares owned by the company’s other shareholder, a United Auto Workers retiree trust. The dual role highlights the complicated path Chrysler has been forced to take to resolve a dispute between its two backers. Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive officer of both Chrysler and Fiat who has spent four years seeking to merge the companies, is at loggerheads with the UAW’s trust over the value of its 41.5 percent stake in Chrysler. Letting public investors put a price on the stake, through the IPO process, is one way to resolve the matter.

The U.S. government is starting another phase of selling off its General Motors stock after cutting its stake in the automaker to just over 7 percent, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The Treasury Department says that it still owns 101.3 million GM shares. It got 912 million shares, a 60.8 percent stake in the company, in exchange for a $49.5 billion bailout of GM in 2009. So far taxpayers have recovered about $35.4 billion, but are still around $14.1 billion in the hole. To break even, the remaining shares would have to sell for nearly $140 each. At yesterday's trading price of $36.92, the government would get about $3.7 billion more, meaning that taxpayers are likely to lose around $10 billion on the deal. The Treasury plans to sell all of its shares by April 1.

Recycler Keywell LLC has filed for bankruptcy protection, blaming weak demand from manufacturers for the steel, nickel and other metals that the company collects from a network of more than 1,000 scrapyards, industrial plants and government agencies across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Executives put Chicago-based Keywell under chapter 11 protection on Tuesday with a plan to sell the company, which supplies recycled titanium, stainless steel and other metals to buyers like steel mills and aerospace manufacturers. In court papers, the company said that it has a purchase offer from fellow scrap-metal recycler Cronimet Holdings Inc., but it will continue to look for higher bids. Keywell officials didn't disclose the value of Cronimet's initial offer, but it is expected to be revealed in future bankruptcy court filings.

Longview Power LLC is plowing ahead with plans to fix its power plant and its balance sheet as it prepares to battle contractors over cash, Kirkland & Ellis LLP's Ray Schrock told a bankruptcy judge yesterday, Dow Jones reported. The Aug. 30 bankruptcy petition froze action against Longview involving a fight over who's to blame for the plant's operational troubles. Talks with secured lenders have begun, and the company last week recovered from the latest in the series of unplanned outages that have plagued the operation, Schrock said. Built at a cost of $2 billion, the Longview plant is carrying a $1.2 billion debt load, more than it can service given the issues that have kept it operating at about two-thirds of its capacity.

Executives at Pro's Ranch Market have put together a bankruptcy exit plan for the struggling grocery chain, promising to repay some of the company's debts using future profits from its 11 locations across the Southwest, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Pro's Ranch Market officials said in court filings that they will either look for a new loan or rely on money from Provenzano family members who own the chain, which caters to Hispanic shoppers by selling imported food products from Mexico and Central America. That money, along with future store profits, would help pay off the company's suppliers and other unsecured creditors who are owed at least $19 million. Under the plan, the company would repay its biggest debt—a $48 million loan handled by Bank of America—an unspecified "discounted" amount within six months of its exit from bankruptcy protection. If the bank votes to reject the plan, it will get between $8 million and $10 million over a 10-year period.