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The union for more than 1,100 workers at Atlantic City, N.J.’s Trump Taj Mahal casino who are rallying to save their health-care and pension benefits are now fighting in two places: in the courtroom and on the streets, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Several hundred protesters plan to block a major traffic intersection near the Atlantic City Expressway yesterday to draw attention to pressure that workers who are unionized through Unite Here Local 54 face, said union spokesman Ben Begleiter. Billionaire Carl Icahn promised to take over the struggling casino, whose owner filed for bankruptcy last month and put $100 million into its operations. But that offer stands only if casino officials can deliver about $15 million worth of cuts from workers and property tax relief from Atlantic City. Casino officials want to stop contributing money to worker pensions and to end their health care coverage.

Apple Inc. supplier GT Advanced Technologies Inc. asked a U.S. bankruptcy court to keep under seal some key documents relating to a third-party, saying this would allow it to avoid paying damages under confidentiality agreements, Reuters reported yesterday. GT Advanced did not disclose the identity of the third-party or the nature of the potential contract violations. In a filing today with the U.S. bankruptcy court in New Hampshire, the company also requested a private hearing to deal with its request. The first hearing of GT Advanced's chapter 11 bankruptcy is scheduled for today at 10 a.m. ET.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/09/gt-advanced-bankruptcy-hearin…

In related news, Apple Inc. said yesterday that it was surprised by supplier GT Advanced Technologies Inc.’s bankruptcy filing this week, and is now considering its next steps, Reuters reported yesterday. GT Advanced, slated to supply scratch-resistant sapphire displays from a new Arizona factory Apple is helping bankroll, filed for bankruptcy on Monday but has offered little explanation as to why.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/08/apple-gt-advanced-tech-idUSL2…

A New York real estate lender has agreed to provide the financing Chicago Spire developer Garrett Kelleher needs to pull the failed condominium project out of bankruptcy, Crain’s Chicago Business reported yesterday. New York-based Stonebeck Capital LLC sent a commitment letter to provide a loan to the Irish developer's venture partner so it can pay off the Spire's creditors this month and exit chapter 11, according to the partner, Steven Ivankovich of Chicago-based Atlas Apartment Holdings LLC. The commitment letter and funding source was revealed at a confirmation hearing this morning for the Spire's bankruptcy plan, which a judge approved.

Bankruptcy lawyers who are preparing to sell Source Home Entertainment's manufacturing division, which makes 60 percent of U.S. retailers' checkout-counter displays, said that there won't be much left from the sale for unsecured creditors who are owed money by the Florida company, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. In a proposed payout plan filed on Monday, Source Home Entertainment lawyers said that unsecured creditors should expect to be repaid less than 1 percent of what they are owed by the company, which filed for bankruptcy after shutting down its magazine- and book-distribution business — its biggest division — and laying off more than 5,000 workers in late May.

An affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management got court approval to buy Atlantic City, N.J.’s shuttered Revel Casino Hotel for $110 million in cash on Tuesday after a judge rejected complaints the auction for the bankrupt complex was tainted, Reuters reported yesterday. "I have heard evidence to satisfy me that the sale to Brookfield should be confirmed," said U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Gloria Burns at the hearing in Camden, N.J. The Canadian investment firm's Brookfield Property Partners picked up the 1,400-room beachfront hotel and casino for a fraction of the $2.4 billion it cost to build. Glenn Straub, a Florida developer who was outbid by Brookfield, blasted the auction as unfair because it was declared over at 5 a.m. on Oct. 1 when he needed more time to put together a bid of up to $140 million.

A bankruptcy judge has ruled that while Marc Dreier should testify at an upcoming trial, the imprisoned ex-lawyer can’t do so in his courtroom, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The attorney winding down Dreier’s old law firm wants Dreier to appear in a New York courtroom to bolster her position in a $138 million lawsuit against an investment firm that allegedly profited from Dreier’s fraud. A federal judge granted the request last month, even as Dreier penned a legal plea saying he’d rather not leave the confines of the low-security federal prison in Minnesota where he’s serving out a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty to cheating investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In a rare showing of solidarity between prisoner and prosecutor, the U.S. attorney’s office agreed that Dreier would be better off giving video testimony. In a letter dated Sept. 26, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York expressed concern about the safety of the bankruptcy court at One Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. The U.S. Marshals Service was also concerned about the overall safety of Dreier’s appearance, the letter said, because of “the number of investor-victims who suffered losses as a result of Mr. Dreier’s well-publicized fraud.” Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein decided on Monday that the bankruptcy court did indeed pose too much of a threat and that the testimony should take place in nearby federal district court, Dreier LLP administrator Sheila Gowan said.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc., Apple Inc.’s partner in a sapphire glass plant in Arizona, will hold its first chapter 11 bankruptcy court hearing on Thursday at 10 a.m. ET, Reuters reported yesterday. Investors are eagerly anticipating the hearing, at which GT has said that it will explain the events that led to Monday's surprise bankruptcy filing, which sparked a 90 percent drop in the company's stock.

Comcast Corp. took its fight against the sale of the Texas television channel that broadcasts Major League Baseball's Houston Astros and the National Basketball Association's Houston Rockets to the courtroom, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur began hearing arguments on Monday over whether Comcast SportsNet Houston can get out of bankruptcy by selling itself to DirecTV and AT&T Inc. Under the proposal, the channel would not repay a roughly $100 million loan that Comcast extended to get the network started in 2012.

GT Advanced Technologies Inc., a parts supplier for Apple Inc., filed for bankruptcy, showing a partnership with the iPhone maker couldn’t assure success for its business of manufacturing lab-grown sapphire used to make mobile-device screens sturdier, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Apple last November signed a deal to make a prepayment of about $578 million to GT Advanced to build furnaces used to make synthetic sapphire. When Apple introduced new iPhones last month though, the smartphones didn’t include the material. The lack of sapphire in the new iPhones was a surprise to those who had tracked the partnership, and the development exposed that GT Advanced had become overly dependent on Apple, said Pierre Maccagno, an analyst with Dougherty & Co. GT Advanced listed assets of $1.5 billion and liabilities of $1.3 billion as of June 28, according to its chapter 11 filing.

Revel AC Inc. should reopen bidding for its Atlantic City casino, which Brookfield Property Partners LP won at auction last week, according to a Florida investor who claimed that he was cheated of a chance to make a higher offer, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Revel, which cost $2.4 billion to build, closed last month after two years of unsuccessfully trying to make a profit in the struggling New Jersey gambling center. It accepted a $110 million offer from Toronto-based Brookfield on Oct. 1 after an all-night auction. Glenn Straub, owner of the Palm Beach Polo Golf and Country Club in Wellington, Florida, protested the way the auction was handled, saying in a court filing Oct. 5 that Revel broke an agreement to provide details about competing bids. Straub also said a “life or death” medical issue hindered his ability to counter Brookfield’s winning offer. The sale is scheduled to go up for approval today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden, New Jersey.