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Dahl's Foods Inc., an 83-year-old Des Moines-based grocery store chain, will disappear from the local landscape as a locally owned company, The Des Moines Register reported today. The 10-store chain filed a $41 million bankruptcy petition in federal court on Sunday asking that it be allowed to reorganize and sell its stores. The likely buyer will be its supplier or another grocery company. The company is also asking that the process be moved along quickly. Dahl's said yesterday that Kansas City, Kan.-based Associated Wholesale Grocers (AWG) plans to buy Dahl's assets and rebrand the stores. AWG is a retailer-owned grocery cooperative and grocery distributor. Court filings show that AWG has offered to buy the chain's assets for a base price of $4.8 million, which could be adjusted depending on the value of inventory and other items. Under one scenario, one of AWG's co-op members could own the stores, with AWG funding the acquisition. AWG said that it plans to rebrand the remaining Dahl's stores and remodel and update the properties. The new brand was not identified.

Biotechnology company Dendreon Corp. filed for chapter 11 protection on Monday and said that it has reached agreements on the terms of a financial restructuring with certain bondholders, Reuters reported today. Dendreon said that the restructuring might take the form of a standalone recapitalization or a sale of the company or its assets. Under the agreements, the senior noteholders will support a reorganization plan to convert all 2016 notes to common equity of the reorganized Dendreon. The company can also conduct a court-supervised sale process for all or substantially all of its assets to a party that would continue producing and providing its prostate cancer vaccine Provenge. The case is In re Dendreon Corp., U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 14-12515.

A former low-level employee at the law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf will be tried separately on criminal charges arising from the collapse of the once-mighty New York firm and not stand trial with three of its former top executives, The New York Times Dealbook reported on Friday. A New York State judge ruled on Friday that Zachary Warren, who was a client-relations manager at the 1,300-lawyer firm and has since become a lawyer, will be tried after the main defendants. Those defendants are accused of masterminding a scheme to use accounting gimmicks to mask the precarious state of Dewey’s finances on the eve of the financial crisis. The decision sets the stage for two back-to-back criminal trials over the events leading up to Dewey’s bankruptcy filing in December 2012, which cost investors in the firm as much $200 million. This year, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, stunned the New York legal community by announcing a 106-count indictment against Dewey’s former top executives — Steven H. Davis, Dewey’s former chairman; Stephen DiCarmine, the firm’s onetime executive director; and Joel Sanders, the firm’s former chief financial officer. At the same time, he announced that his office had secured guilty pleas from seven former employees of the firm, many of whom once worked in Dewey’s finance and accounting department.

The Pittsburgh Riverhounds professional soccer team, along with the South Side stadium where it plays, will be out of bankruptcy by the end of the year, a federal judge decided, the Trib Total Media reported on Friday. Terrance C. "Tuffy" Shallenberger, the majority owner of both companies that own the team and stadium, said that the ruling clears the way for the Riverhounds to put together a team for next season. Hon. Jeffery A. Deller approved reorganization plans that will transfer ownership of the team and stadium to new companies that Shallenberger will form Dec. 30. Pittsburgh Pro Soccer LLC will own the team, and City View Event Center LLC will own the stadium.

A federal judge has ruled in favor of an insurance company for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee that challenged whether it was liable for the church's handling of child sexual abuse cases, The Associated Press reported on Friday. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa said that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley erred earlier this year when she refused to let OneBeacon Insurance Co. pursue the liability question with the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He sent the case back to bankruptcy court for further action. However, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the ruling may be moot. Church spokesman Jerry Topczewski said that OneBeacon has negotiated a tentative settlement with the archdiocese.

Wiley Rein confirmed Thursday afternoon its decision to separate its eight-lawyer bankruptcy and financial restructuring practice following a strategic review, American Lawyer reported today. The 277-lawyer firm, whose only office is in Washington, D.C., saw gross revenue remain flat last year at $232 million as profits per partner increased slightly to nearly $1.2 million, according to The American Lawyer annual Am Law 200 data. “This very difficult decision to spin off the bankruptcy practice follows an in-depth analysis of the current and future needs of the firm’s clients, and is aligned with the firm’s new strategic plan that we launched at our recent annual partner/of counsel retreat,” said a statement by managing partner Peter Shields, who took over the firm’s top leadership post three years ago from cofounding partner Richard Wiley. H. Jason Gold, the chair of Wiley Rein’s bankruptcy practice, said that as an independent group “dedicated to offering bankruptcy and restructuring services, we will have enhanced flexibility and the opportunity to provide even greater value to our bankruptcy clients.”

A bankruptcy judge will allow Atlantic City, N.J., to collect as much as $30 million in unpaid property taxes owed by the shuttered Revel Casino Hotel so long as the city agrees not to impose costly penalties, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In response to a request from the city, Judge Gloria Burns yesterday agreed to lift the Bankruptcy Code's shield protecting Revel from litigation and creditor collections. Atlantic City in September had asked Judge Burns for permission to sell, at a Dec. 11 auction, the rights to collect the taxes. Though the city won't be allowed to tack on penalties, the sale could still double the interest rate on the unpaid taxes to 18 percent.

As cash quickly runs out to keep Atlantic City’s Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort open, a bankruptcy judge refused to sign off on the outlines of a bankruptcy-exit plan for owner Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc., telling the casino operator to come back next week with a firmer vision for the casino’s future, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. "My concern is that there is simply too much immediate uncertainty," Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross said during a Wednesday hearing. "There needs to be something in place that provides comfort that there is really a path to a plan." Under its current proposal, Trump Entertainment's secured lenders — entities controlled by billionaire Carl Icahn — would swap some of their $292 million in debt for the equity in a reorganized company. The Icahn entities have also agreed to extend a $100 million loan to get the ailing gambling operation on its feet. The plan, however, depends on the company securing $175 million in tax benefits and other aid from city, county or state government agencies.

GT Advanced Technology Inc. said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sought information from the company regarding trading of its shares dating back to January 2013, Reuters reported yesterday. The SEC, in a letter dated Oct. 15, also asked for information on the company's sapphire business and a share offering, GT Advanced said. The former supplier to Apple Inc. filed for bankruptcy on Oct 6, decimating its market value and triggering speculation over what may have soured its relationship with the iPhone maker. GT Advanced's shares surged from about $3 in January 2013 to a peak of $19.77 in July 2014 as investors bet on the company's association with Apple. The stock started tumbling after it emerged that the company's scratch-resistant sapphire glass had been left out of Apple's new large-screen iPhones. Apple said in October that GT Advanced's "ambitious" vision of sapphire manufacturing was ultimately not quite ready for primetime. After the bankruptcy, GT Advanced's shares dropped to a low of 30 cents. They were trading at 55 cents in over the counter trading on Thursday.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig said that global banks should set up shields for certain short-term funding deals as a step toward ensuring they can be dismantled in U.S. courts after a failure, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Hoenig called on banks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to look at protecting funding such as repurchase agreements with a system similar to one announced last month that will delay termination of derivatives contracts during a U.S. financial-firm bankruptcy. Industry-driven stays “may be needed for those parts of the repo book that use long-term assets to secure short-term funding,” Hoenig said. “Volatile wholesale funding” at banks’ broker-dealer units is most vulnerable to runs across borders and firms, he said. Banks must prepare for the possibility that broker-dealers could enter bankruptcy and need sufficient financing as part of “living wills” required under the Dodd-Frank Act, Hoenig said. The FDIC and Federal Reserve, which can force business changes at banks that don’t come up with credible plans, found fault with submissions by 11 of the largest banks.