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Elliott Management Corp. has been adding to derivatives trades that would pay off if Caesars Entertainment Corp. defaults as the hedge fund helps orchestrate a bankruptcy plan for the casino operator’s biggest unit, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The hedge fund, run by billionaire Paul Singer, one of Caesars’s biggest bondholders, bought credit-default swaps before entering negotiations with Caesars in September and has continued to purchase the derivatives. Caesars, the most-indebted U.S. gambling operator, is attempting to reorganize $18.4 billion of borrowings after losing money every year since 2009. The Las Vegas-based company said in August that creditors that also own swaps were trying to push it into default. The swaps transactions may explain why Caesars’s discussions with its creditors have focused on a potential Jan. 14 bankruptcy filing when the company says it has enough cash to meet its debt obligations through next year.

The owner of a shopping center in Boynton Beach, Fla., filed for chapter 11 to halt a foreclosure lawsuit by a subsidiary of BBX Capital Corp. and then filed a lawsuit against its lender, the South Florida Business Journal reported today. BankAtlantic hit Grove Plaza D and owners Jack Lupo, Dale Goldstein, Brian Horowitz, Gary Axelrod and Michael Rauch with a foreclosure lawsuit in 2012. After the bank was sold, the loan was assigned to Florida Asset Resolution Group, owned by former bank parent company BBX Capital in Fort Lauderdale. The litigation concerns the 12,236-square-foot retail plaza on 1.2 acres. The interest-only mortgage was made for $2.7 million in 2008, but it has ballooned to over $5 million with the default interest rate.

The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of a Massachusetts pharmacy linked to a 2012 meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people filed a plan that would set aside at least $135 million to compensate victims and their families, Reuters reported yesterday. The plan was filed after a federal bankruptcy court in July approved a deal to settle scores of lawsuits against New England Compounding Center (NECC). NECC shut down in October 2012 after authorities linked it to the worst outbreak of fungal meningitis in U.S. history due to drugs it shipped to health providers across the country. The company filed for bankruptcy two months later. Owners of NECC, which produced a tainted steroid that sickened more than 700 people in 20 states, have already contributed nearly $50 million to the NECC estate for eventual distribution and are expected to contribute additional sums through tax refunds and the sale of a related business.

A Caesars Entertainment Corp. creditor group said managers should be stripped of control of the casino company’s operating unit because they looted the subsidiary of billions of dollars in assets, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. UMB Bank, trustee for first-lien noteholders owed about $1.25 billion, sued Caesars yesterday in Delaware Chancery Court, repeating allegations made by junior creditors in August. Yesterday’s suit, the first by senior creditors, came after some had agreed on the outline of a debt restructuring plan for the operating unit. The first-lien creditors yesterday asked the court to appoint a receiver for the unit.

Customers of Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, are closer to getting back at least some of the money they lost this year when it shut down and announced that their funds had gone missing, New York Times DealBook reported today. The bankruptcy trustee for Mt. Gox, which is based in Tokyo, announced today that it would work with a California-based Bitcoin exchange, Kraken, to return the money left in the estate to the company’s 127,000 creditors. Jesse Powell, Kraken’s chief executive, said that his company would help with the claims process, including evaluating the assets owed to creditors, and that it would assist in the investigation of Mt. Gox’s collapse. He said that the trustee would have the final decision on payments in Bitcoin.

Creditors of failed smartphone screen material supplier GT Advanced Technologies will get a peek at Apple Inc.'s secrets under a protective court order signed yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Apple is handing over documents and submitting to questions in advance of a planned December court review of a proposed settlement with GT, which would clear Apple of allegations it is to blame for GT’s bankruptcy. The information exchange is under wraps, but anything creditors seize on as grounds to challenge Apple’s deal with GT will have to meet strict standards to justify the secrecy, Bankruptcy Judge Henry Boroff warned the companies at a hearing yesterday.

The former owners of Lake Las Vegas, including two of Texas’ billionaire Bass brothers, paid $115 million last month to quietly settle a long-running lawsuit tied to the luxurious golf community and resort’s collapse into bankruptcy in 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The lawsuit was brought by Larry Lattig, a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, who sued the initial backers of Lake Las Vegas for the $470 million they took out of the project — a 3,600-acre resort community centered on a man-made lake about 20 miles from the Las Vegas Strip — before it tumbled into bankruptcy. The ex-owners — billionaire brothers Sid and Lee Bass and the estate of the late California developer Ron Boeddeker — were able to cash out of their investments in the resort community, due to a syndicated loan arranged by Credit Suisse Group. The Credit Suisse loan was similar to a home-equity loan, allowing the resort’s backers to cash out their investments. The Swiss bank later marketed similar loans to a number of other owners of western luxury resorts — including Yellowstone Club in Montana, the Promontory Club in Utah and the Tamarack Resort in Idaho — that eventually ended up going bust when property values cratered.

Aereo Inc., the online TV streaming service brought down by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that its technology violated copyright, told a bankruptcy judge that there’s plenty of interest in the company’s assets, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. While there is no stalking horse in place to make an opening bid, an auction should be scheduled for Feb. 17 with an approval hearing set a few days later, said William Baldiga, Aereo’s lawyer. The Barry Diller-backed startup sought bankruptcy protection on Nov. 21 after the Supreme Court said its TV service violated programming copyright protections. The nation’s top court rang the death knell for the company in June, overturning a federal appeals court ruling and handing a victory to broadcast giants including CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox Inc. Aereo had been striving to revolutionize broadcast TV viewing, offering live and recorded programs via the Internet for as little as $8 a month, using a massive antenna farm in Brooklyn, New York. The startup’s failure eliminated an alternative to cable and satellite bundles, which can cost $100 a month and include channels many subscribers don’t watch.

Earlier this year Maryland’s Community Law Center had its first victory under an updated law meant to stop bad behavior by the owners of blighted properties that refuse to clean them up, but late Tuesday night the progress in that effort was halted as the landlord filed for bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Last year, using Maryland’s revised community bill of rights law, a number of community associations and the Community Law Center sued Scott Wizig — a landlord who was sued by Eliot Spitzer in New York in the early 2000s and is the subject of a recent investigative report by the Houston Press — and nine LLCs that owned 57 nuisance properties in Baltimore. These properties were uninhabitable, vacant houses that were attracting crime and trash, allegedly posing a health and safety hazard and harming the community. The lawsuit alleged that Wizig was breaking the law at approximately 140 of his Baltimore properties. The bankruptcy filings on tuesday allowed Wizig — who, despite the court’s order, hasn’t brought the properties to code, according to Robin Jacobs of the Community Law Center — to freeze litigation. A request to pull the litigation into the bankruptcy case, rather than allow it to proceed in state court, has already been filed alongside the bankruptcy petitions.

A federal judge has accepted a compromise between bankrupt Great Northern Paper and its creditors that sets aside a portion of the expected receipts from the sale of the East Millinocket, Maine-based mill for dozens of unsecured creditors, the Portland Press Herald reported on Saturday. In a ruling filed on Friday at U.S. District Court, Judge Louis H. Kornreich approved a proposal to remove liens from Great Northern Paper’s assets so a sale of the defunct paper mill can go ahead. A “carve out” from the proceeds of the sale will provide funds to the company’s unsecured creditors, including many businesses in the Katahdin region that were never paid for goods and services. Collectively, they are owed $22.6 million.