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Apollo Global Management LLC’s Momentive Performance Materials Inc. yesterday won court approval of its bankruptcy plan, which cuts its debt to less than $1.3 billion from $4 billion, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, N.Y., had said that he would approve the plan if the chemical company boosted the interest rate on notes in the reorganized company. Bonds had been trading at record volumes after he gave his conditional approval Aug. 26. The plan was negotiated by Momentive Performance, Apollo and a committee representing holders of second-lien secured debt. Most of the reorganized company’s stock will go to holders of $1.34 billion in 9 percent second-lien notes. Momentive Performance listed $2.69 billion in assets and $4.17 billion in debt in its April chapter 11 filing. The case is In re Momentive Performance Materials Inc., 14-bk-22503, U.S. Bankruptcy Court (S.D.N.Y.) (White Plains).

Buccaneer Energy Ltd. and its family of subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy in May, leaving millions worth of unpaid bills in Alaska, the Peninsula Clarion (Kenai, Alaska) reported Wednesday. The Australia-based independent’s debt in the state is more than $2.1 million, according a list of Buccaneer’s 30 largest unsecured creditors filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston. The Alaska Department of Revenue is listed as Buccaneer’s ninth-largest creditor and the second-largest in the state, with a bill of $605,116 for a combination of Cook Inlet oil and gas lease payments and production royalty payments. Overall, Buccaneer owes about $33 million to its 30 largest creditors. The company has kept current on its lease payments for three Kenai Loop wells located in the city through the bankruptcy, which total about $25,000 per year. The other parties looking for payments related to the Kenai Loop production, namely Cook Inlet Region Inc., which claims it is owed gas royalties, will likely resume their case in Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission hearings later this year. Buccaneer filed to have five office leases and IT contracts vacated on Sept. 9 and filed for immediate relief from a $6,118 per month office lease in Anchorage that is set to expire Aug. 31, 2015. A hearing regarding the lease motion is scheduled for Sept. 23, at noon, Alaska Standard Time.

A Philadelphia-area swimming pool that opened in the late 1950s for black members who were denied access to a nearby whites-only pool has filed for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal’s Bankruptcy Beat blog reported yesterday. Officials who put the Nile Swim Club of Yeadon, a Philadelphia suburb, into chapter 11 protection on Wednesday didn’t explain the club’s survival plan in the seven-page bankruptcy petition. A fundraising effort had been launched earlier this year to pay off about $134,000 in taxes. The swim club has a storied place in civil rights history; the facility opened in 1959 after two black families were not allowed into another “racially exclusive” club. The effort to establish the Nile Swim Club got national media attention at the time and received support from singer Harry Belafonte and the Supremes. The club filed for bankruptcy once before in 2010 “to avoid a threatened tax sale” and work out a payment plan with a local school district, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The company that runs the Indiana Toll Road is weighing a possible bankruptcy filing in the coming weeks as it works to cut its roughly $6 billion debt load and shop the road to potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The company, controlled by units of Spanish infrastructure company Ferrovial and Australian investment bank Macquarie Group Ltd., has reportedly already reached an agreement with most of its secured creditors on a restructuring plan that would set the framework for a sale of the road. These secured creditors — mainly hedge funds that have been buying discounted debt from European banks — would receive most of the sale proceeds. The plan and sale would be completed through a prepackaged chapter 11 filing and isn't expected to interrupt the toll road's operations. The toll road, a 157-mile stretch of highway that runs through Indiana between the Ohio Turnpike and Chicago Skyway, has struggled for years with a heavy debt load and lower-than-expected traffic. It missed an interest payment in June, which helped accelerate restructuring talks with the hedge funds that bought the road's bank debt.

The House Judiciary Committee yesterday approved H.R. 5421, the “Financial Institution Bankruptcy Act of 2014,” by a voice vote, according to a committee press release. The legislation aims to deal with resolving systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs). The bill would permit an expedited transfer of all the debtor's assets to a new bridge company on a short-term basis. The Financial Institution Bankruptcy Act incorporates the recommendations of hearing witnesses, regulators and experts from three Committee hearings on the subject over the past year. The legislation specifically adds a new subchapter V to chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code to address the resolution of financial institutions, including large, multi-national financial firms. Read the press release.
http://judiciary.house.gov/index.cfm/press-releases?id=71A94DCE-AAA3-4B…

Click here to read the text of H.R. 5421. http://news.abi.org/congress/113/hr-5421-the-the-financial-institution-…

Revel AC Inc., the bankrupt New Jersey casino operator, reached a deal to sell its shuttered Atlantic City property to Glenn Straub’s Polo North Country Club Inc. for $90 million, absent a better offer, Bloomberg News reported today. Revel, which opened in April 2012 at a cost of $2.4 billion, has filed for bankruptcy twice. After the second filing, in June, it sought a buyer willing to keep the resort open. When no acceptable offers surfaced, it closed this month, becoming the third Atlantic City casino to do so this year. The city’s gambling business has been hurt by competing casinos in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York. Polo North is the stalking-horse bidder, whose offer for the property is subject to higher bids at a Sept. 24 auction, according to filings yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, New Jersey. Other potential buyers have until Sept. 23 to make competing offers. The case is In re Revel AC Inc., 14-bk-22654, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of New Jersey (Camden).

A U.S. bankruptcy judge signed off on New World Resources PLC 's debt-for-equity swap, a key step in the Dutch coal miner's plan to restructure more $1 billion in debt by issuing new shares, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein on Tuesday recognized NWR's bankruptcy filing under chapter 15. Recognition of NWR's U.K. court proceeding paves the way for the company to begin implementing its debt-cutting plan, which was approved last week by the High Court of Justice of England and Wales. Under the deal, a group of secured bondholders owed about EUR500 million will split EUR300 of new senior secured debt and EUR115 million of notes that could be converted into equity.

Troubled electronics retailer RadioShack Corp. said that it may need to file for bankruptcy if its cash situation worsens, after reporting its tenth straight quarterly loss, Reuters reported today. The company is also exploring other options, including a sale or an investment, to overhaul its balance sheet, it said in a regulatory filing today. RadioShack, whose sales have been in a free-fall since 2010, said that it was working with its lenders and landlords to restructure its debt and cut costs. The company raised doubts about its ability to continue as a going concern and said it may have to liquidate as a last resort.

Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. got court approval to use cash that secures loans from funds affiliated with billionaire Carl Icahn to prevent immediate liquidation, even as a lawyer said the casino operator may shut down if it doesn’t get concessions from unions, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross yesterday granted the company founded by Donald Trump permission to use the money to fund its bankruptcy and operations. Judge Gross also said the company could continue paying employees and vendors and honoring customer programs.

Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain ruled yesterday that senior bondholders of bankrupt Momentive Performance Materials cannot change their votes to accept the quartz and silicone maker's proposed restructuring, Reuters reported yesterday. Knocking down what he viewed as an effort to avoid a less desirable payout, Judge Drain denied the bondholders' request to switch their votes. Waterford, N.Y.-based Momentive, owned by Apollo Global Management, filed for protection under chapter 11 protection in April with a contentious proposal to cut $3 billion in debt and transfer control to a class of junior bondholders that also included Apollo. The offer by senior bondholders to change their votes met with resistance from Momentive, which viewed the shift as an effort to avoid repayment in the form of a long-term note, rather than cash.