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Quiznos is pushing off until May a key court hearing on its bankruptcy exit plan after unsecured creditors asked for more time to probe its restructuring strategy, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The sandwich chain labeled its chapter 11 proposal a pre-packaged plan, because the company filed for protection with support from key creditors, including senior lenders owed $444 million. Quiznos says that the chapter 11 plan itself, however, with $626 million in debt, is going to push a cramdown on unsecured creditors, forcing landlords, suppliers and other creditors to accept what it proposes to give them. Unsecured creditors, including suppliers, landlords and a franchisee, formed ranks recently in a bid to slow Quiznos's race to the bankruptcy exit. They negotiated an agreement from the company to postpone a chapter 11 plan confirmation hearing from April to May 12.

Energy Future Holdings Corp., the power producer taken private in the biggest-ever leveraged buyout, moved a step closer to a bankruptcy plan after a key creditor neared a reorganization agreement, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday. Fidelity Investments, which holds some of Energy Future’s $45.6 billion of debt, is hashing out terms for the plan, which is being discussed by the power producer’s management, two groups of unsecured creditors and the private-equity owners who took it over. The investment firm’s participation in negotiations is crucial because it enables Energy Future to enter bankruptcy with a pre-arranged plan that would reduce the time it takes to reorganize in chapter 11. Fidelity has been a holdout among creditors to the company formerly known as TXU Corp., which KKR & Co., TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners bought for $48 billion in 2007.

Charges of heavy-handed tactics have surfaced in a fight over the cash raised in the sale of Fisker Automotive Inc., a failed maker of luxury hybrid autos, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Fisker filed for chapter 11 protection last year and was put up for auction after a struggle between unsecured creditors and a company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, who was poised to seize the car maker. The dispute comes in the wake of an auction where China's Wanxiang Group outbid Li's takeover company, Hybrid Tech. Now the fight is over the sale proceeds, with unsecured creditors challenging Hybrid Tech's claim to the cash from the $149.2 million sale.

LightSquared Inc. said that it will ask a judge not to count a “no” vote on its bankruptcy reorganization plan cast by a fund controlled by Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen, saying that the fund acted in bad faith, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The fund, SP Special Opportunities LLP, owns $1 billion of debt in LightSquared, the wireless broadband company controlled by Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners LLC. LightSquared has accused Ergen of secretly accumulating the debt so he can buy the company’s airwaves for a below-market price through bankruptcy. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman on Feb. 24 approved the terms of a reorganization plan, which was then sent to creditors for a vote. The plan values LightSquared at $7.7 billion and doesn’t hinge on regulatory approval for airwaves that are its main asset. A denial of such approval pushed the company into bankruptcy in 2012.

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.

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.

LightSquared Inc., Philip Falcone’s bankrupt wireless-spectrum company, will get court permission to have creditors vote on four competing plans to restructure the company, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman in Manhattan said that she would approve all four disclosure statements, which describe the reorganization plans, once final versions are submitted. The plans come from the company, an ad-hoc group of lenders, Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, and U.S. Bank NA and Mast Capital Management LLC. Creditors will vote by Dec. 5, according to court papers. LightSquared’s plan proposes a sale of almost all of its assets at auction while the company seeks approval from the Federal Communications Commission to use its airwaves. The lender group, which holds $1.4 billion of the $1.7 billion in debt of LightSquared’s LP unit, has a similar plan calling for a sale. A unit of Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network Corp. (DISH) would make a stalking-horse bid of $2.2 billion. Harbinger’s plan would reorganize LightSquared without a sale. The case is In re LightSquared Inc., 12-bk-12080, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman blocked a proposed appointee to a committee to oversee the bankruptcy auction of broadband company LightSquared LP, citing a conflict of interests, and admonished the company for making the nomination, Reuters reported yesterday. Donna Alderman cannot be part of the committee because she could be seen as having a bias against satellite television company Dish Network Corp., which is seeking to acquire LightSquared's spectrum, Judge Chapman said. Alderman, a former director at satellite operator DBSD, lost her job when Dish acquired DBSD in 2011, then unsuccessfully sought $7 million from Dish for her role in generating value for DBSD's estate. She ended up with $750,000 in severance.

LightSquared Inc.’s proposed format for an auction of its wireless-spectrum assets is improper, according to a group of lenders, and may foil a $2.22 billion offer from a unit of Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network Corp., Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The bankrupt company run by Philip Falcone faces a fight over how to sell its assets after the lenders filed an objection in Manhattan bankruptcy court. LightSquared proposes letting a committee that includes Falcone’s investment firm Harbinger Capital Partners LLC choose the winning bid, something lenders say shouldn’t be allowed because Harbinger opposes any sale of LightSquared’s assets. LightSquared’s proposed bid procedures are part of “its scorched-earth strategy” which also included filing a lawsuit against the global positioning system industry, lenders said. The lawsuit violated bankruptcy rules and the GPS industry has decided not to support LightSquared’s technology, according to today’s filing.

A battle between two U.S.-led consortiums for control of Billabong International Ltd. took a potentially decisive twist today when the Australian surfwear company tore up an existing refinancing deal and overhauled its top management, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Billabong said that it had accepted a sweetened funding package from distressed debt investors Centerbridge Partners LP and Oaktree Capital Management LP that offered debt more cheaply, backing away from a rival bid it had endorsed only weeks earlier from private equity firm Altamont Capital Partners and Blackstone Group's credit arm, GSO Capital Partners.