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Senior lenders of a major Energy Future Holdings Corp. unit have moved to protect their claim to a $665 million early-payment premium, which was thrown into jeopardy when the company filed for bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Trustees for investors in nearly $4 billion worth of senior bonds want a judge to find Energy Future cannot evade paying the premium because of its chapter 11 filing on April 29. Senior and junior lenders to the Energy Future Intermediate subsidiary say that the premium, more than $1.3 billion between the two debt issues, is the price Energy Future must pay if it wants to refinance $7.7 billion worth of debt. Energy Future disputes that position, but has offered to settle with the lenders for 20 to 50 percent of the amount claimed. The settlement has picked up very little new support since the Texas power company filed for bankruptcy, new court papers say.

A flurry of filings this week in the Evergreen International Aviation bankruptcy case in Delaware has revealed a sharp division among stakeholders, the Oregonian reported today. On one side is an Arizona company that leased 1.5 million square feet to Evergreen to park aircraft. On the other side is a coalition of lenders led by Goldman Sachs. The parties are tussling over who should be first in line when and if the trustee in the case proceeds with a proposed sale of "substantially all" of Evergreen's aircraft assets to Jet Midwest, a Kansas City company.

Residential Capital LLC is trying to claw back more than $20 million from companies it did business with before its 2012 bankruptcy filing, including Xerox Corp. and First American Financial Corp., the Wall Street Journal reported today. In 36 separate lawsuits filed on Monday in bankruptcy court, the former mortgage services arm of Ally Financial Inc. is seeking money from parties that provided services to it in the three months before its May 14, 2012, chapter 11 filing. Neither Xerox, which through itself and two subsidiaries provided various business services for ResCap for more than $2 million, nor First American, which offered more than $6 million worth of property inspections and other services for the company, didn't immediately comment on the law suits. The rest of the suits are against risk-management firms, mortgage information providers and other vendors, mostly for amounts between $50,000 and $1 million. Such suits often end up in settlements.

Sandwich chain Quiznos will provide unsecured creditors a $2 million cash recovery, according to a newly filed chapter 11 plan, a better deal for the group that had at first been offered a choice between a small amount of equity or some potential litigation proceeds, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. This pool of money is being contributed half from Quiznos and half from Fortress Investment Group, which currently owns Quiznos, along with Avenue Capital Group. This revision to the plan comes after unsecured creditors successfully delayed a hearing on confirmation of the plan from April to today as they negotiated with Quiznos.

Southfield, Mich.-based Lear Corp. will ask a bankruptcy court judge in New York later this month to sign off on an $8.75 million settlement to a Detroit lawsuit involving automotive supplier price-fixing over the previous decade, Crain’s Detroit Business reported today. The manufacturer of interior systems including seats and electronics, with $16.2 billion 2013 revenue and 122,000 employees, will pay that sum to resolve accusations it was a part of a conspiracy to bolster the prices of wire harness components between 2000 and 2010 in a multi-district litigation lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Marianne Battani in Detroit. The settlement agreements call for a $4.75 million payout to the lawsuit’s “direct purchasers,” or other auto companies that bought the parts at colluded prices, another $3 million to car buyer plaintiffs and about $1 million to auto dealerships that are also part of the court case. The agreement also calls for Lear to put up $370,263 of its own cash and obtain the rest out of assets held in reserve from the company’s previous chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization from 2009 for “disputed claims.”

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s brokerage wants court approval to set aside more money for creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. In a Thursday bankruptcy court filing, brokerage trustee James W. Giddens said that he needs to create a reserve account for holders of secured and priority claims against the brokerage. Those claims, which include fees incurred during Lehman's bankruptcy and other claims, are currently estimated at about $624 million. If Giddens gets that approval, he said that he wants to turn his attention to paying out more than $4 billion still owed to general unsecured creditors of the brokerage, a group that includes former employees and others.

James River Coal Co., the mining company that filed for bankruptcy last month, won court approval of $110 million in financing to fund business operations over the objection of its unsecured creditors, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Huennekens gave final approval of the financing yesterday at a court hearing. The company received interim approval to borrow as much as $80 million on April 9 from a syndicate of lenders including Cantor Fitzgerald Securities as administrative agent and Deutsche Bank AG as arranger.

Energy Future Holdings Corp., the Texas power provider that filed for bankruptcy last month, invited holders of about $4 billion in notes to trade that debt for a share of a loan financing its restructuring, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The opt-in period ends June 6, subject to a court hearing, Energy Future said today in a filing in bankruptcy court. To get full consideration, the notes, issued by Energy Future Intermediate Holding Co. and EFIH Finance Inc., must be tendered by May 19, the company said. Energy Future filed for bankruptcy April 29, seven years after being taken private in a record $48 billion leveraged buyout. The company has said that it expects to complete its restructuring in 11 months.

A group of former Howrey LLP partners have agreed to pay more than $4.2 million to the defunct law firm’s bankruptcy estate through a settlement that Howrey’s trustee calls a crucial step toward constructing a plan to pay back creditors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The proposed settlement, filed on Monday in bankruptcy court includes contributions of between $21,000 and $192,000 each from 60 of the firm’s former equity partners. Howrey trustee Allan Diamond sought to claw back money that the partners were paid when the firm was allegedly insolvent. Diamond said that he reached the deal after nearly two years of negotiations and will use the outlines of the settlement — which calls for partners to return 16 percent of what they earned between April 2010 and the firm’s dissolution a year later — to reach similar deals with the rest of the firm’s former partners. Diamond said that he will sue any of the 70 or so remaining partners who refuse to settle.

The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff's firm yesterday began distributing another $351.6 million to the swindler's former customers, boosting the amount recouped to nearly $6 billion, Reuters reported yesterday. Trustee Irving Picard said that the fourth interim payout will go to victims of the Ponzi scheme who had 1,081 accounts at Bernard L Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Payments range from about $500 to about $77.8 million and average $325,000. Most of the payout comes from a $325 million settlement of Picard's claims against JPMorgan Chase & Co., which had been Madoff's main bank for more than two decades. Claimants will receive 3.18 percent of what they are owed, unless their claims have been fully paid off, Picard said.