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Penthouse magazine publisher FriendFinder Networks Inc. has landed bankruptcy court approval for the key deal underpinning its effort to make a quick run through chapter 11 and drop $300 million worth of debt along the way, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi endorsed an agreement the company reached with investors controlling 80 percent of its first-lien debt and 78 percent of its second-lien debt.

The United Mine Workers of America has reached a $400 million agreement with Peabody Energy Corp. and Patriot Coal Corp. that settles a bitter dispute over health care funding for retirees in the wake of Patriot's bankruptcy, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on Saturday. The complex agreement, filed with the bankruptcy court in St. Louis, calls for Patriot and Peabody, its former corporate parent, to fund a health care trust for four years beginning in 2014. The trust will pay for health care benefits for thousands of retired miners. In return for the cash contributions, the mine workers union agreed to give up "virtually all" of its 35 percent equity stake in the reorganized Patriot Coal — a key part of an earlier retiree health care funding agreement between the union and the company.

The court-appointed administrator in charge of winding down MF Global Holdings Ltd. is concerned about the “exorbitant” defense fees being rung up by lawyers defending Jon Corzine and other former executives and managers in a securities fraud lawsuit, the Wall Street Journal reported today. “Defense fees incurred to date exceed $40 million, a figure that has never been adequately explained or justified and which suggests duplication of efforts among the Individual Insureds’ professionals,” lawyers for the administrator said in a Friday court filing. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn last month denied the executives’ request to use an additional $10 million in insurance money, saying he wanted to wait until an appeal from MF Global customer Sapere Wealth Management was heard. The executives are asking the judge to reconsider his decision.

The main business of Suntech Power Holdings Co. has already been involved in bankruptcy proceedings in China, now some U.S. bondholders are seeking to force what was once the world's largest supplier of solar panels into involuntary bankruptcy in the U.S., Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. The U.S. bondholders yesterday filed a petition in a New York court to force U.S.-traded Suntech into involuntary bankruptcy. Suntech, based in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi, has racked up more than $2.3 billion in mostly Chinese debt and has posted losses amid a plunge in solar-panel prices and trade sanctions by the U.S.

U.S. biotech firm Savient Pharmaceuticals Inc. filed for chapter 11 protection yesterday and said that it has agreed to sell most of its assets to Sloan Holdings CV for about $55 million. The agreement with Sloan, a unit of US WorldMeds LLC, would serve as a stalking-horse bid in a court-supervised auction of Savient's assets. The drugmaker, which has been under pressure from its largest creditor to liquidate, said it would keep its gout drug Krystexxa commercially available in the U.S. Savient listed total assets of about $74 million and liabilities of $260 million as of June 30, court documents filed on Monday showed.

A union-affiliated trust fund set up to pay medical expenses for Chrysler Group LLC retirees said that its ownership stake in the U.S. auto maker was worth $3.6 billion at the end of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The current value of the trust's 41.5 percent stake in Chrysler is at the heart of a continuing battle between the fund's managers and Chrysler majority owner Fiat SpA. The UAW Retiree Medical Benefits Trust took the stake in Chrysler as part of the U.S. auto maker's 2009 bankruptcy, but is now eager to divest its holdings to pay for retiree health care benefits. The trust said that the value of its Chrysler shares gained about $900 million in 2012. That gain helped drive an 18 percent increase in the fund's overall assets, which were $10.3 billion by the year's end, according to a 2012 financial statement on the U.S. Department of Labor website.

The creditors of Energy Future Holdings remain at odds over how to split the Texas power company's equity in an expected bankruptcy as their confidentiality agreements lapse, Reuters reported yesterday. Secured lenders at Texas Competitive Electric Holdings, which represents Energy Future's unregulated subsidiary, and unsecured bondholders at Energy Future Intermediate Holdings, Energy's Future's regulated subsidiary, had previously been in direct negotiations. But the EFIH unsecured bondholders have so far been reluctant to re-sign confidentiality agreements. If they do not re-sign the confidentiality agreements, the creditors and the company will make public details of their talks in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commision as early as today. The company, saddled with $40 billion of debt, wants to finalize a restructuring plan before Nov. 1, when $250 million in bond payments are due. Filing for bankruptcy before Nov. 1 would suspend the bond payments; but filing without a restructuring plan could entail years of battles and competing restructuring plans in bankruptcy court.

Energy Future Holdings Corp., the Texas power generator taken private in the biggest leveraged buyout ever, is close to obtaining a loan of more than $3 billion ahead of a bankruptcy filing that may come this month, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are the key lenders vying to provide parts of the debtor-in-possession financing, and first-lien creditors to Energy Future’s Texas Competitive subsidiary have been invited to participate. The final terms and lenders may be decided next week. Some Energy Future creditors continued to negotiate in New York this week, seeking consensus on a restructuring plan ahead of filing for chapter 11. Texas’s largest electricity provider has struggled to reduce its debt since it was taken over in a $48 billion deal in 2007 led by KKR & Co., TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. The biggest-ever leveraged buyout left Energy Future with more than $40 billion in debt over a bet that natural gas prices would rise. Instead, they plunged to below $2 from a July 2008 high of more than $13 per million British thermal units.

Big names in the consulting industry are objecting to $89 million of claims filed in the bankruptcy of Boca Raton, Fla.-based tech company TLO LLC, the South Florida Business Journal reported yesterday. Jules Kroll, founder of Kroll Inc., and Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters, filed their objection to claims made by a company controlled by the family of deceased TLO founder Hank Asher. Asher’s daughters, Desiree Asher and Carly Asher Yoost, took over TLO as co-CEOs after he died. The Ashers characterize payments made by an investment vehicle, Technology Investors Inc., as loans. But Kroll and Glocer allege that the loans are actually equity investments that should take a back seat to other creditors in the bankruptcy. TLO, which provides data search tools, filed for chapter 11 in May and is represented by Robert Furr of Boca Raton-based Furr & Cohen, PA. Kroll and Glocer are represented by Luis Salazar of Miami-based Salazar Jackson, LLP.

Longview Power LLC yesterday won a one-month delay in a showdown with contractors after telling a bankruptcy judge that there is hope of a settlement in the long-running disputes, according to a Dow Jones newswire report yesterday. Judge Brendan Shannon said he would "reluctantly" delay until Nov. 12 a court fight over cash between the troubled West Virginia plant operator and contractors that helped build the $2 billion facility. The cash fight that has consumed weeks of attorney time, the judge warned, won't make or break Longview's chances of a turnaround. He urged the combatants to focus on the larger questions of how to revamp a $1.2 billion debt load in chapter 11 while fixing the technical troubles that have plagued the facility. Longview’s contractors have pushed for a fast hearing on who controls some $58 million worth of letters of credit. Longview says that it's entitled to access the money to keep going and warns that it may be down to its last $1 million by the end of November. Longview, which operates a 700-megawatt coal-powered plant in Maidsville, W.Va., is the largest privately funded project in West Virginia history. The company filed for chapter 11 protection Aug. 30.