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Bankrupt GT Advanced Technologies Inc. won approval of a settlement with Apple Inc., preventing costly litigation by granting the iPhone maker $439 million in claims against furnaces at a synthetic sapphire plant, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Bankruptcy Judge Henry Boroff said at a hearing yesterday that he would sign an order approving a revised settlement agreement. During a break in the hearing, GT Advanced and Apple made changes addressing concerns the judge raised. Judge Boroff previously said yesterday that he was concerned about terms of the settlement giving Apple the immediate right to foreclose on Merrimack, N.H.-based GT Advanced’s assets in some circumstances. Under the revised accord, if GT Advanced is still in chapter 11, Apple will file a notice of non-payment and intent to foreclose with the court before acting.

Nortel Networks Corp. bondholders will soon know whether a $1 billion settlement with the failed company will pass muster in a U.S. bankruptcy court, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Approval of the settlement, allotting bondholders $1 billion in interest on their investment in Nortel's distressed debt, will have a "direct and substantial" impact on the Canadian company and its creditors — including disabled and retired workers in Canada and Europe — are counting on it for payment, said Ken Coleman, a lawyer for Nortel's Canadian parent company. If the pact fails, it will be a blow to the hedge funds that snapped up Nortel's debt at a steep discount after the company collapsed in 2009. Bond prices indicate investors are expecting payment in full, with much interest.

Latin American Nextel carrier NII Holdings Inc. has asked for a bankruptcy judge's permission to pay executives and other top-level employees as much as $9 million in bonuses, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported yesterday. In court papers filed last week, NII proposed bonuses for eight employees, including five senior executives and three vice presidents, tied to goals that incentivize a timely restructuring or sale. The names of the employees in line for the bonuses weren't disclosed.

Creditors of failed smartphone screen material supplier GT Advanced Technologies will get a peek at Apple Inc.'s secrets under a protective court order signed yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Apple is handing over documents and submitting to questions in advance of a planned December court review of a proposed settlement with GT, which would clear Apple of allegations it is to blame for GT’s bankruptcy. The information exchange is under wraps, but anything creditors seize on as grounds to challenge Apple’s deal with GT will have to meet strict standards to justify the secrecy, Bankruptcy Judge Henry Boroff warned the companies at a hearing yesterday.

Aereo Inc., the online TV streaming service brought down by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that its technology violated copyright, told a bankruptcy judge that there’s plenty of interest in the company’s assets, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. While there is no stalking horse in place to make an opening bid, an auction should be scheduled for Feb. 17 with an approval hearing set a few days later, said William Baldiga, Aereo’s lawyer. The Barry Diller-backed startup sought bankruptcy protection on Nov. 21 after the Supreme Court said its TV service violated programming copyright protections. The nation’s top court rang the death knell for the company in June, overturning a federal appeals court ruling and handing a victory to broadcast giants including CBS Corp., Walt Disney Co.’s ABC, Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal and 21st Century Fox Inc. Aereo had been striving to revolutionize broadcast TV viewing, offering live and recorded programs via the Internet for as little as $8 a month, using a massive antenna farm in Brooklyn, New York. The startup’s failure eliminated an alternative to cable and satellite bundles, which can cost $100 a month and include channels many subscribers don’t watch.

Television streaming service Aereo Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection after a U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the company's business model violated copyright laws, Reuters reported today. InterActiveCorp has a 23.30 percent stake, said in a chapter 11 filing yesterday said that it would sell its assets or reorganize. The Court in June said that Aereo had infringed copyrights of broadcasters by capturing live and recorded programs through antennas and transmitting them to subscribers for $8-$12 a month. Aereo, which raised $95.6 million in financing, suspended its streaming service at the end of June and cut jobs. The company listed total assets of $20.5 million and debt of about $4.2 million in its filing. The filing is In re Aereo Inc., U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No:14-13200.

Creditors of GT Advanced Technologies complained in a bankruptcy court filing that the sapphire company may have gotten too little in its proposed settlement with Apple Inc. over legal claims stemming from a deal to supply sapphire screens, Reuters reported yesterday. GT Advanced's chief operating officer has said in court papers that the iPhone maker pulled a "bait and switch" to force the sapphire maker into a money-losing deal in 2013. GT Advanced shocked investors by filing for bankruptcy in October in a case that was initially shrouded in secrecy due to a confidentiality agreements with Apple. After the bankruptcy filing, Apple agreed to release GT Advanced from the deal and allow it to sell more than 2,000 sapphire furnaces located in Mesa, Arizona. The agreement needs approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Henry Boroff, who has been hearing the chapter 11 case in Springfield, Mass.

Billionaire investor Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners LLC is appealing a bankruptcy court ruling that derailed his proposal to reorganize LightSquared by canceling a $2.4 billion claim by a group of competing creditors and splitting the company in two, Bloomberg News reported on Friday. When Falcone’s effort failed, creditors including Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen reached a deal on a new chapter 11 proposal that would give Ergen 60 percent of the equity in a reorganized LightSquared. Harbinger, LightSquared’s current controlling shareholder, filed a notice of appeal yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, indicating a district court judge in New York will be asked to review the Oct. 30 decision. LightSquared, based in Reston, Va., has been in bankruptcy for more than two years as the company and its lead creditors argue over the best way to reorganize. The company previously narrowed three plans to one, only to be rebuffed by the bankruptcy judge. The new Ergen-led deal, which also gives equity to lender JPMorgan Chase & Co., was the result of all-day mediation on Oct. 31 with a federal judge in Manhattan, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman said at a Nov. 3 hearing.

Nortel Networks Corp.’s U.S. unit spent $169 million on its bankruptcy case in the first nine months of this year, and there’s no end in sight to the spending on its lawyers and advisers, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The numbers began popping up last Thursday on the bankruptcy docket after a lawyer for Nortel’s Canadian parent pointed out to a judge that the U.S. unit was about eight months in arrears in complying with its chapter 11 financial reporting requirements. Nortel filed eight months’ worth of financial reports between Thursday and Monday. Once the pride of the Canadian technology community, Nortel and its international counterparts launched a global liquidation in 2009, battered by the global economic slump. It sold its businesses and patents, ringing up $7.3 billion in the process. However, Nortel U.S., which had more than $1 billion in cash at the end of 2011, stopped filing its monthly financial reports earlier this year as it prepared for an international fight over how to distribute the proceeds of its global liquidation, and that pricey litigation continues.

GT Advanced Technology Inc. said that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sought information from the company regarding trading of its shares dating back to January 2013, Reuters reported yesterday. The SEC, in a letter dated Oct. 15, also asked for information on the company's sapphire business and a share offering, GT Advanced said. The former supplier to Apple Inc. filed for bankruptcy on Oct 6, decimating its market value and triggering speculation over what may have soured its relationship with the iPhone maker. GT Advanced's shares surged from about $3 in January 2013 to a peak of $19.77 in July 2014 as investors bet on the company's association with Apple. The stock started tumbling after it emerged that the company's scratch-resistant sapphire glass had been left out of Apple's new large-screen iPhones. Apple said in October that GT Advanced's "ambitious" vision of sapphire manufacturing was ultimately not quite ready for primetime. After the bankruptcy, GT Advanced's shares dropped to a low of 30 cents. They were trading at 55 cents in over the counter trading on Thursday.