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Creditors of failed smartphone screen material supplier GT Advanced Technologies will get a peek at Apple Inc.'s secrets under a protective court order signed yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Apple is handing over documents and submitting to questions in advance of a planned December court review of a proposed settlement with GT, which would clear Apple of allegations it is to blame for GT’s bankruptcy. The information exchange is under wraps, but anything creditors seize on as grounds to challenge Apple’s deal with GT will have to meet strict standards to justify the secrecy, Bankruptcy Judge Henry Boroff warned the companies at a hearing yesterday.

Aereo Inc., the online TV streaming service brought down by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that its technology violated copyright, told a bankruptcy judge that there’s plenty of interest in the company’s assets, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. While there is no stalking horse in place to make an opening bid, an auction should be scheduled for Feb. 17 with an approval hearing set a few days later, said William Baldiga, Aereo’s lawyer. The Barry Diller-backed startup sought bankruptcy protection on Nov. 21 after the Supreme Court said its TV service violated programming copyright protections. The nation’s top court rang the death knell for the company in June, overturning a federal appeals court ruling and handing a victory to broadcast giants including CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox Inc. Aereo had been striving to revolutionize broadcast TV viewing, offering live and recorded programs via the Internet for as little as $8 a month, using a massive antenna farm in Brooklyn, New York. The startup’s failure eliminated an alternative to cable and satellite bundles, which can cost $100 a month and include channels many subscribers don’t watch.

Customers of Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, are closer to getting back at least some of the money they lost this year when it shut down and announced that their funds had gone missing, New York Times DealBook reported today. The bankruptcy trustee for Mt. Gox, which is based in Tokyo, announced today that it would work with a California-based Bitcoin exchange, Kraken, to return the money left in the estate to the company’s 127,000 creditors. Jesse Powell, Kraken’s chief executive, said that his company would help with the claims process, including evaluating the assets owed to creditors, and that it would assist in the investigation of Mt. Gox’s collapse. He said that the trustee would have the final decision on payments in Bitcoin.

Three former leaders of defunct law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf accused of falsifying the company's financial results cannot go to trial in January because an insurance company has refused to pay their latest legal bills, their lawyers told a judge on Friday, Reuters reported yesterday. Justice Robert Stolz of New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan agreed to postpone the case for a month, setting a February 23 trial date, while legal wrangling takes place to get the insurer to pay up. Former Dewey chairman Steven Davis, ex-executive director Stephen DiCarmine and former chief financial officer Joel Sanders face grand larceny, scheming to defraud and other criminal charges. They are accused of overstating revenue and decreasing expenses to keep the firm's true financial condition from banks and other creditors. Two carriers have paid a total of $35 million in claims under Dewey's directors and officers insurance, the lawyers said, but the third has refused to make good on its $15 million of coverage.

LDK Solar Co., the Chinese solar-cell maker that defaulted on its bonds this year, won U.S. court approval of its foreign restructuring, capping an international reorganization, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The restructuring “is believed to be the first judicially approved, multi-jurisdictional debt restructuring of its kind for a China-based corporate group,” said Jessica Boelter, a lawyer for LDK. Xinyu, China-based LDK filed for chapter 15 protection last month, listing about $1.13 billion in debt and $510 million in assets as of May 31.

NII Holdings Inc. yesterday announced a restructuring deal that would put the company in the hands of its bondholders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The Latin American Nextel Carrier said that the deal has the support of its major creditors, including hedge-fund manager Aurelius Capital Management and those holding bonds of NII's Luxembourg subsidiaries. The company said that $4.35 billion of its unsecured notes would be converted into equity in a reorganized NII. Aurelius and Capital Research and Management Co. also agreed to backstop a $500 million rights offering, according to a filing with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

Lawyers representing Atlantic City, N.J.'s Revel Casino Hotel will meet with a handful of its creditors today to try to salvage a deal to sell the shuttered boardwalk resort to a Canadian private-equity firm, the Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The lawyers announced the meeting at the conclusion of a bankruptcy court hearing held on Friday morning after the private-equity firm, Brookfield Capital Partners LP, threatened to back out of a $110 million deal to buy the property. The deal hangs on the outcome of negotiations with bondholders who financed the construction of Revels' custom-built power plant.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., the bankrupt owner of the Trump Taj Mahal, offered to restore health insurance to its employees for at least two years in a last-ditch bid to keep the Atlantic City casino open, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. In a letter dated on Friday, Trump Chief Executive Officer Robert F. Griffin asked union official Robert McDevitt to drop an appeal of a court ruling that allowed the casino to cancel its labor contract. In return, the company would restore health care and contribute 81 cents per hour worked by an employee to a pension. Last week, Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross ordered company officials to justify their continued control of the company or risk having a trustee appointed to liquidate Trump entertainment’s assets. The judge scheduled a hearing for Dec. 4. Trump Entertainment faces continuing losses and doesn’t have financing to support its reorganization efforts, so “there is no reasonable likelihood of rehabilitation,” Gross said in a Nov. 19 order. The Trump Taj Mahal is set to close on Dec. 12, becoming the fifth Atlantic City casino to shutter this year.

Going-out-of-business sales started Friday at Alco Stores, a chain of nearly 200 general-merchandise discount retailers that cater to small communities in America’s heartland, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. The impending closure of the stores — which sell everything from appliances and furniture to clothing and groceries — is likely to severely limit the shopping options for Alco customers. Most of the stores are located in towns of fewer than 5,000 residents, and Alco specifically targets areas not already serviced by Wal-Mart and other larger retailers. The 113-year-old business sought bankruptcy protection last month with plans to liquidate if it didn’t find a buyer willing to keep the stores open. This week, Alco said that a sale didn’t pan out, and it won a bankruptcy court’s approval to go through with the going-out-of-business plan.

A federal judge has accepted a compromise between bankrupt Great Northern Paper and its creditors that sets aside a portion of the expected receipts from the sale of the East Millinocket, Maine-based mill for dozens of unsecured creditors, the Portland Press Herald reported on Saturday. In a ruling filed on Friday at U.S. District Court, Judge Louis H. Kornreich approved a proposal to remove liens from Great Northern Paper’s assets so a sale of the defunct paper mill can go ahead. A “carve out” from the proceeds of the sale will provide funds to the company’s unsecured creditors, including many businesses in the Katahdin region that were never paid for goods and services. Collectively, they are owed $22.6 million.