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Pinnacle Airlines Corp. said yesterday that it reached agreements, including additional financing, that will allow it to emerge from bankruptcy protection as a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc., the Associated Press reported yesterday. Pinnacle said that it must file a reorganization plan acceptable to Delta and other creditors by Feb. 15. The company is trying to cut costs and streamline its fleet to 81 fuel-efficient planes that it would operate for Delta, which has been pressing Pinnacle to reduce costs.

Confusion over how much legal protection former Dewey & LeBoeuf partners are getting under a settlement with the defunct firm's estate may slow what Dewey advisers hoped would be the swift confirmation of the chapter 11 plan they have drawn up for repaying creditors who say they are owed some $600 million, Law.com reported today. A handful of dissenters raised objections to that plan at a hearing yesterday during which Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn asked his own questions about the document and an accompanying disclosure statement. Together, the two filings—which were submitted to the court in November—are intended to serve as a roadmap for how the Dewey estate plans to allocate funds to secured and unsecured creditors and other constituents. Judge Glenn urged Dewey's bankruptcy counsel from Togut, Segal & Segal to describe exactly who can still sue whom if the so-called partner contribution plan reached last year with some 400 partners is approved as part of the larger chapter 11 plan.

Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and six other daily papers, emerged from bankruptcy, four years after a doomed leveraged buyout by billionaire Sam Zell led to chapter 11 proceedings, Bloomberg News reported today. Distributions to creditors have been initiated, the Chicago-based company said today. As part of its exit from bankruptcy, Tribune Co. also closed on a new $1.1 billion term loan and a $300 million revolving credit line. Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy after Zell, a real-estate developer, orchestrated an $8.3 billion leveraged buyout of the company in 2007, just before a global recession and a slump in print advertising devastated the newspaper industry. The buyout loaded Tribune with debt, and Zell failed to pull off a turnaround of the newspapers.

4Kids Entertainment Inc. is set to emerge from chapter 11 as a more streamlined licensing agent with a fresh appetite for sports deals, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported on Friday. Hon. Shelley C. Chapman cleared 4Kids to make its way out of bankruptcy after more than a year and a half spent dueling, and then settling, with several Japanese companies, selling some assets and devising a creditor-repayment proposal. Under 4Kids's plan, unsecured creditors owed $6.2 million are set to see a full recovery, as are holders of $4.1 million in administrative claims. Stockholders are set to see their common stock canceled and then receive reissued shares of new common stock, representing a recovery of 69 cents on the dollar. 4Kids tumbled into chapter 11 in April 2011 amid a dispute with a pair of Japanese companies, TV Tokyo Corp. and Nihon Ad Systems Inc., over royalties tied to the popular trading card game Yu-Gi-Oh!. After months of fighting, a bankruptcy-court ruling eventually paved the way to a settlement that provided 4Kids with $8 million.

NewPage Corporation (NewPage) announced Friday that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in Wilmington has confirmed the company's chapter 11 plan, according to a newswire report on Friday. NewPage, headquartered in Miamisburg, Ohio, is a leading producer of printing and specialty papers in North America with $3.5 billion in net sales for the year ended Dec. 31, 2011. The company owns paper mills in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin with a total annual production capacity of approximately 3.5 million tons of paper.

KV Pharmaceutical Co., taking a big step toward emerging from bankruptcy, announced Thursday that it has obtained $85 million in financing and reached a settlement with a Massachusetts company over the prenatal drug Makena, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported yesterday. The financing and settlement would allow the drug manufacturer to move forward with a reorganization plan, KV officials said. KV plans to file its reorganization plan with the bankruptcy court in the next few weeks. The court is scheduled to consider approval of the settlement with Hologic Inc. at a hearing Dec. 26. Once among the St. Louis region's strongest public companies, the scandal-plagued company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in August. The move followed a string of troubles involving oversized morphine tablets, a criminal prosecution of a subsidiary, and the banishment of KV's former chairman from doing business with federal health programs. A crippling blow came last year when the Food and Drug Administration declined to enforce the company's exclusive right to sell Makena, which aims to reduce the risk of premature births, following public outrage about the drug's high price. Court papers indicate that KV will pay Hologic $60 million by the end of the year to satisfy claims related to Makena, which KV had purchased from Hologic. KV's bankruptcy petition, which was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, listed the company's assets as $237 million and its debts as $728 million.

NewPage Corp., the largest U.S. coated-paper maker, won court approval of its plan to reorganize and exit bankruptcy in the hands of its first-lien noteholders, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. The company will leave bankruptcy with about $500 million in debt after shedding about $2.7 billion in obligations, the company's chief executive officer, George F. Martin, said. NewPage, based in Miamisburg, Ohio, filed for bankruptcy in September 2011, listing $3.4 billion in assets and $4.2 billion in debt. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross said he planned to sign an order approving the reorganization plan after the company and a group of creditors work out final wording. The plan is based in part on a settlement with an official committee of unsecured creditors, who had disputed the company's claims that since its $2.7 billion in secured debt exceeded the value of its assets, it could pay lower-ranking creditors nothing. The case is In re NewPage Corp., 11-12804, U.S. Bankruptcy Court (D. Del.) (Wilmington).

The lawyer for AMR Corp. (AAMRQ)'s unsecured creditors' committee warned American Airlines pilots of the risks of rejecting a tentative contract that would allow the carrier's post-bankruptcy plan to be weighed against a US Airways Group Inc. (LCC) merger, Bloomberg News reported today. Jack Butler of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP told members of the Allied Pilots Association that pilots would lose a 13.5 percent stake in a restructured AMR if the deal isn't approved. A successful vote would help the creditors' committee evaluate AMR's preferred strategy to leave bankruptcy on its own and US Airways' takeover push. Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR needs a contract with the pilots, the only union without a new accord, to determine its future costs. Negotiations have ground on since 2006 without a final agreement, even as AMR warned of bankruptcy before filing for court protection on Nov. 29, 2011. A tentative accord calling for union concessions failed in August when 61 percent of pilots voted it down, prompting American to throw out their existing contract and begin imposing terms to lower costs.

Hawker Beechcraft's disclosure statement and reorganization plan, which includes emerging from bankruptcy as a smaller, stand-alone company, has been approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle reported today. The approval from the court paves the way for the company to begin soliciting approval from its creditors. The voting process for creditors is to be completed by Jan. 22. Hawker Beechcraft will seek approval from the court to emerge from bankruptcy at a confirmation hearing scheduled for Jan. 31.

The Las Vegas Monorail Co. has emerged from chapter 11 protection, LasVegas.cbslocal.com reported yesterday. CEO Curtis Myles said that the move will allow the rail system to “again focus completely on serving” Las Vegas visitors. The company filed for chapter 11 in January 2010, because of a high debt load, which was reduced to $13 million. The monorail runs behind and along the Vegas Strip, with seven stops at major resorts and the Las Vegas Convention Center.