Private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP won a bankruptcy auction for Optim Energy LLC's Twin Oaks power plant in Texas with a $126 million offer, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Blackstone officials bid against competitors, including Boston-based energy investor ArcLight Capital Partners, to gradually raise the price from an $82 million opening bid for the Robertson County, Texas, power plant, according to a transcript of Monday's auction filed in court yesterday.
Eagle Bulk Shipping filed for bankruptcy yesterday, the latest in a string of shipping companies to make a chapter 11 filing, and said it reached agreement with its lenders to cut its debt by $975 million, Reuters reported yesterday. The U.S. company said in a statement that creditors who hold more than 85 percent of its loans have voted in favor of a pre-packaged reorganization plan. Under the plan, lenders would receive nearly all the stock in the company in return for what they are owed. If approved by the court, the reorganization plan would cancel the company's current stock, which trades on the Nasdaq. Shareholders will receive 0.5 percent of the stock in a reorganized Eagle Bulk, plus warrants to acquire an additional 7.5 percent.
Revel AC Inc., whose Atlantic City, N.J., casino has been in bankruptcy twice since it opened in 2012, postponed its auction set for today one week to Aug. 14 so it can analyze multiple purchase offers it received, Bloomberg News reported today. Revel “received a number of bids” by the Aug. 4 deadline yet the company still requires “additional time to fully analyze and evaluate the bids,” according to court documents filed yesterday. Revel will probably postpone a hearing to seek approval of the sale to the winning bidder, which is currently set for Aug. 8, to a reserve date of Aug. 18.
Overseas Shipholding Group Inc. exited chapter 11 protection yesterday, less than two years after filing for bankruptcy to restructure its finances under the weight of a large tax liability, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Peter Walsh cleared the way for Overseas Shipholding's bankruptcy exit at a July 18 hearing, and a deadline to appeal Judge Walsh's decision passed Aug. 1. The company's bankruptcy plan repays in full senior lenders owed $1.5 billion and gives bondholders cash, new debt or reinstated loans.
A Blackstone Group LP unit won a bankruptcy auction with a $126 million offer for a coal-fired Texas plant being sold by Optim Energy LLC, the power producer controlled by billionaire Bill Gates’s investment firm, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Major Oak Power LLC, an investment vehicle created by Blackstone to make the acquisition, beat a unit of ArcLight Capital Partners LLC, which bid $121.5 million at Monday’s auction, according to court papers filed yesterday. The Blackstone unit more than doubled its first offer of about $60 million for Optim’s 305-megawatt Twin Oaks plant, according to court filings. ArcLight’s affiliate replaced Major Oak as the lead bidder for the plant with a bid of about $82 million.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled yesterday that Barclays Plc is entitled to about $6 billion of disputed assets as part of its hurried purchase of much of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s brokerage unit at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, Reuters reported yesterday. The decision is a setback for the brokerage's creditors, including Lehman affiliates and hedge funds, for whom the trustee James Giddens has been seeking to recoup money. Lehman had been Wall Street's fourth-largest investment bank. It had $639 billion of assets when it filed for chapter 11 protection on Sept. 15, 2008, making its bankruptcy by far the biggest in U.S. history. Barclays won court approval to buy much of Lehman's brokerage business at a Sept. 19, 2008 hearing overseen by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck in Manhattan. A dispute remained, however, over how to dispose of various "cash" assets of the brokerage. These included about $4 billion of margin assets held by third parties to support a Lehman exchange-traded derivatives business, and $1.9 billion of "clearance box" assets used to process securities trades.
Independent power company Entegra Power Group LLC filed a pre-packaged bankruptcy and expects to emerge from chapter 11 under the control of its junior secured lenders, according to court documents, Reuters reported yesterday. Entegra owns El Dorado, Arkansas-based Union River Power Station, which has an operating capacity of 2,100 megawatts, and Trans-Union Interstate Pipeline, a 42-mile natural gas transmission facility that supplies the station. The company is also an indirect co-owner of Gila River, a 2,334 megawatt power plant in Arizona. The company's second-lien lenders, who are owed $237 million, are set to receive a combination of new third-year, Series A second-lien notes and cash that would be raised from new Series B second-lien notes. Entegra's third-lien lenders will exchange their $1.3 billion in claims for $550 million in new third-lien debt and controlling ownership in the company when it emerges from bankruptcy, according to court documents filed on Monday. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/05/entegra-power-bankruptcy-idUS…
General Motors Co. is again trying to use "old" GM's chapter 11 case to protect itself from lawsuits related to an ignition-switch defect, this time the suits filed by drivers who got into accidents before the 2009 bankruptcy court sale, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Lawyers for GM said in a court filing on Friday that the wording of the sale order approved by the court places lawsuit liability with the old version of GM, not the new one. Plaintiffs would still be allowed to file claims for accidents as part of a program GM announced late last month, regardless of when their accidents occurred. Friday's filing pertains only to actual lawsuits filed against GM by victims whose accidents occurred before the 2009 sale approval. The issue of whether "old" GM, "new" GM or both GMs are liable is a big one for plaintiffs, regardless of why they are suing. The latest filing cites seven accidents involving Chevy Cobalt cars that were part of GM's recall of 2.6 million small cars for an ignition-switch defect, as well as one 2004 Chevy Malibu, which was also recalled. The drivers of those cars are suing GM without making a clear distinction between "old" and "new" GM, lawyers for GM said in the Friday filing.
A bankruptcy judge ordered the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, now more than three years into its chapter 11 proceedings, to enter mediation with hundreds of sexual-abuse victims whose claims make up the vast majority of the church's liabilities, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Susan Kelley at a hearing last Wednesday endorsed a request for mediation made by the archdiocese a day earlier. The archdiocese's request for mediation singled out mounting legal expenses, which currently total far more than the pool of funds designated to repay victims.
Final bids were due yesterday for Revel as Atlantic City’s newest casino resort, currently mired in its second chapter 11 proceeding, seeks a buyer, the Associated Press reported yesterday. Last month, Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian said that there are six potential buyers for the Revel Casino Hotel, which is up for sale at a bankruptcy auction.
