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Billionaire Wilbur Ross won a judge’s approval to buy shares in a shipping company held by Lehman Brothers Inc., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. WL Ross & Co. offered about $110 million for the 34 percent stake in gas-tanker company Navigator Holdings Ltd. Hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., a creditor of the brokerage, objected that Ross’s company, which already owns Navigator shares, would gain a controlling stake without paying a premium for control. Ross answered yesterday in a bankruptcy court filing that it bought most of its Navigator shares last year for the same $25 each that Lehman will receive. The Lehman brokerage liquidation is Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Lehman Brothers Inc., 08-01420, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Equipment once used to build state-of-the-art thin-film solar power panels for Abound Solar Inc. has been auctioned off, the Denver Business Journal reported. The Loveland, Colo.-based company filed for chapter 7 on July 2 as company officials blamed competition from less-expensive Chinese-made solar power panels for Abound’s financial difficulties. The auction for the equipment ended yesterday.
Equipment used at Abound’s main manufacturing facility will be auctioned live, on site, during a two-day webcast auction on Oct. 2-3, according to Great American Group, Inc., who is conducting the auctions.

The owners of stalled New Jersey development Medford Village said in court documents that it belongs in chapter 11, despite creditor Lennar Corp.'s arguments that the project's filing was made in "bad faith," Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. The 280-acre project by developer Stephen Samost called the Miami home builder's allegations that it filed for bankruptcy in bad faith "disingenuous at best," according to documents filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, N.J. "The record ultimately shows that the debtor properly and adequately exercised state-court remedies available to it before filing its bankruptcy petition to reorganize its affairs. In short, these improper-conduct contentions have no merit and must be rejected in their entirety," Medford said. Late last month, Lennar filed a motion asking the court to dismiss Medford's bankruptcy case so it can execute a foreclose judgment and move forward with a sheriff's sale of the Medford project.

Bankruptcy Judge Marci McIvor set Oct. 16 as the date for Capitol Bancorp Ltd. to argue for its plan to turn over its network of struggling community banks to its debtholders before federal bank regulators seize them, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. The company's reorganization plan looks to turn over ownership of its subsidiary banks located in 10 states to groups owed some of the company's $195.6 million worth of debt.

Global Aviation Holdings Inc. on Friday filed a restructuring plan that would hand ownership of its charter-airline service to its senior secured bondholders and cut its debt by about $168 million, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. More than 80 percent of those bondholders support the plan, court papers show, which Global Aviation said should help it exit chapter 11 protection by the middle of December. Under the plan, the bondholders are slated to receive all of the new shares in the restructuring, subject to dilution by equity-incentive programs, as well as $40 million in new second-lien debt.

The team of former Dewey bankruptcy lawyers who represented the Los Angeles Dodgers in the team's $2 billion sale appear to be using the sale as leverage in a potential settlement with the firm’s estate, which has asked them to help collect fees from the case, the Wall Street Journal reported today. According to a stipulation filed late last week in federal court, the four ex-partners–Bruce Bennett, Sidney P. Levinson, James O. Johnston and Joshua M. Mester–are pursuing damage claims for “fraud, misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty and other claims” against Dewey & LeBoeuf, members of the firm’s executive committee and “certain other persons.” All four had special pay deals with the firm that, according to the filing, date back to 2011.

Discount retailer Syms Corp. said yesterday that it completed its financial restructuring and emerged from chapter 11 protection after closing all of its stores and liquidating their merchandise, the Associated Press reported yesterday. The emergence completes a 10-month bankruptcy process for Syms and its Filene's Basement subsidiary. The reorganized company, which was renamed Trinity Place Holdings Inc., will try to sell off the company's commercial real estate and license its intellectual property for the benefit of its shareholders. Trinity expects to satisfy the negotiated payments to creditors required by its reorganization plan. Most of the funds needed to emerge from bankruptcy protections were raised through the sale of $25 million of new shares of common stock.

About 60 former Howrey attorneys have joined forces to protect themselves from potential lawsuits to recover the compensation they received before the law firm’s demise and subsequent bankruptcy filing last year, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The attorneys, who once populated Howrey’s intellectual property, litigation and other practices and now work at such firms as Cooley and Greenberg Traurig, have hired the San Francisco law firm of Dumas & Clark to represent them in "protecting and advancing certain common interests and issues in lawsuits, claims, and proceedings that are or may potentially be alleged or asserted by or against members of the group," according to a bankruptcy court filing on Friday. The trustee running Howrey’s liquidation, Allan Diamond, has said that he may sue Howrey’s former partners to recover compensation paid out of the law firm’s alleged profits.

Eastman Kodak Co., which put patents up for sale at a bankruptcy auction, is consulting with creditors about retaining the patents and forming a licensing company, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. Kodak has been engaged in “extensive ongoing negotiations” for a potential sale and licensing transaction, the company said in a court filing on Friday. Kodak, based in Rochester, N.Y., put more than 1,000 patents on the auction block to finance a turnaround after filing for bankruptcy in January. The patents may be worth $2.2 billion to $2.6 billion based on an estimate by 284 Partners LLC, the company said in court papers. A newly formed licensing company would be a “source of recovery” for creditors, Kodak said in its court filing.

The Treasury Department is resisting a push by General Motors Co. to sell the government's entire stake in the automaker, the Wall Street Journal reported today. U.S. taxpayers kept the nation's largest automaker by sales afloat with a $50 billion bailout in 2009 and now own 26.5 percent of the Detroit company. But GM executives have grown increasingly frustrated with that ownership, and the stigma of being known as "Government Motors." Executives have said that the U.S.'s shadow is a drag on its reputation and hurts the company's ability to recruit talent because of pay restrictions. Earlier this summer, GM floated a plan with Treasury officials to repurchase 200 million of the roughly 500 million shares the U.S. holds in the automaker. Under the plan, Treasury would sell the remaining shares through a public stock offering. But Treasury officials are not interested in GM's offer at the current price and are not in a rush to offload shares. The biggest reason: A sale now would leave the government with a hefty loss on its investment.