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Syms Corp. said that it struck a deal that will bring peace to its chapter 11 case and propel the defunct discount retailer toward a bankruptcy exit with a $25 million equity rights offering providing for the exit, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Under the revamped proposal, which will update the company's previous plan to reorganize around its real estate holdings, all allowed claims against Syms will be paid in full, "pursuant to certain agreed upon time frames." Allowed trade and other vendor claims against subsidiary Filene's Basement LLC--whose retail operations, like Syms's, were shuttered in the wake of the November bankruptcy filing--will also be paid in full. Holders of allowed unguaranteed lease-rejection claims against Filene's will see a 75 percent recovery.

U.S. Trustee Tracy Hope Davis on Friday objected to the retention of law firms and public relations advisers that had filed applications to advise Dewey & LeBoeuf in its bankruptcy proceedings, Reuters reported on Friday. Davis objected to the applications of law firms Proskauer Rose LLP and Keightley & Ashner LLP, arguing that the case does not "warrant the need for two law firms to perform what appear to be the same services." Dewey, the trustee's filing said, sought to employ both firms to advise on claims brought by the firm's largest unsecured creditor, the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The U.S. Trustee also questioned whether Proskauer has conflicts in representing Dewey.

ABI's Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 has released the names of nearly 130 corporate restructuring experts who have agreed to serve on one of 13 advisory committees to examine discrete current issues. The diverse group of professionals come from the backgrounds of law, finance and the judiciary. The lists of names can be found on the Commission's website. The thirteen advisory committees/study topics are: Administrative Claims, Critical Vendors and Other Pressures on Liquidity; Avoiding Powers; Bankruptcy Remote Entities, Bankruptcy-Proofing and Public Policy; Distributional Issues Under Plans; Executory Contracts and Leases; Financial Contracts, Derivatives and Safe Harbors; Financing Chapter 11; Governance and Supervision of Chapter 11 Cases and Companies; Labor and Benefits Issues; Multiple Enterprise Cases/Issues; Plan Issues: Procedure and Structure; Role of Valuation in Chapter 11 Cases; and Sales of Substantially all of the Debtor’s Assets, Including Going Concern Sales. The Commission is working to break down each study topic further into subtopics—a process intended to help advisory committees identify all potentially relevant issues and coordinate areas of potential overlap among study topics.

The Commission has announced a schedule of fall public hearings at major insolvency conferences, where interested members of the restructuring community can appear and provide testimony to the Commission or to one or more of the advisory committees. The hearings will be held at the NCBJ annual meeting on October 26, the TMA annual convention on November 3 and the Commercial Finance Association annual meeting on November 15. Other public hearing dates will be announced.

The team winding down the bankrupt New York law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP intends to present its former partners, whose earnings are subject to clawbacks from the firm’s many creditors, with a plan to settle those claims in as little as two weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The swift timetable is intended to secure an agreement before the end of July, when a six-week plan to fund the bankruptcy process using lenders' cash collateral expires. Partners who agree to the settlement may be released from future claims by Dewey’s estate and creditors, and also from claims against them by other partners.

Urban radio-station operator Inner City Media Corp. is seeking to keep control over its chapter 11 case for another two months as awaits regulatory approval to sell its assets, Dow Jones DBR Small Cap reported today. In court papers filed on Tuesday, the company asked for an extension through Sept. 4 to file a plan detailing how it will repay its creditors. A hearing on the company's request is scheduled for July 17.

U.S. Trustee Tracy Hope Davis said in court papers filed yesterday that Residential Capital LLC needs to do more to ensure it is protecting consumer privacy for homeowners under bankruptcy law in the sales of its mortgage loan and servicing businesses, Reuters reported yeterday. Davis also challenged the potential break-up fee and other parts of an auction process for those businesses, saying that they would discourage bidders from participating. ResCap, the mortgage unit of Ally Financial, filed for bankruptcy in May with a plan to sell its mortgage servicing business for about $2.4 billion to Nationstar Mortgage Holdings, owned by Fortress Investment Group. It also plans to sell some mortgage loans to Ally for about $1.4 billion.

A federal judge said he was "inclined to dismiss" a bankruptcy filing by the Northern Mariana Islands pension fund, scuttling the first such case by a cash-strapped U.S. public-employee retirement system, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Faris wrote in a tentative ruling on Tuesday that the pension fund is a "governmental unit" and therefore ineligible for chapter 11 protection. The islands' pension fund filed for protection last month after it failed repeatedly to force the government of the U.S. territory to contribute to its retirees' benefit plan. The pension-fund officials had been seeking in court to cut retirement benefits by about half to save money. The case's dismissal complicates efforts to preserve retirement benefits that are owed to about 10 percent of the islands' 53,000 residents. The fund now has $256 million to cover $1 billion in liabilities over the next 20 or so years. Officials say that the fund could run out of money to pay benefits by 2014.

RG Steel LLC filed for chapter 11 protection today, one week after the company said that it was running short of liquidity and set plans to idle three steelmaking plants, Reuters reported. Privately held RG Steel said a week ago it was suffering a liquidity crisis, looking for a buyer and would idle all three of its steel mills starting in June. The company and several affiliates filed for protection listing more than $1 billion in both assets and liabilities.

The Times-Picayune, a 175-year-old fixture in New Orleans and a symbol of the city’s resilience during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, has buckled under the pressures of the modern newspaper market, The New York Times reported yesterday. Advance Publications said Thursday that it would scale back the printed edition to three days a week and impose staff cuts as a way to reduce costs as well as shift its emphasis to expanded online coverage. The decision will leave New Orleans as the most prominent American city without a daily newspaper, but it also reflects the declining lure of the paper as a printed product. In 2005, before Katrina, the paper had a daily circulation of 261,000; in March 2012, the circulation was 132,000. The developments were the latest instance of reorganization in a rapidly changing industry, which continues to struggle with declining advertising revenue and the changing preferences of readers for online news outlets. Data tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed that papers with a circulation of 25,000 or more had a 21 percent drop in circulation between 2007 and 2012.