%1

Phil Falcone, the billionaire investor whose Harbinger Capital Partners owns wireless satellite company LightSquared, said yesterday that he expended considerable energy in 2012 and 2013 trying to work out who was buying up LightSquared's debt, Reuters reported yesterday. The purchases, which later turned out to have been made by Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen, are at the center of a trial in the U.S. bankruptcy court in New York this week. LightSquared and Falcone accuse Ergen of hiding his identity as the purchaser to overcome restrictions on competitors such as Dish from buying LightSquared debt. Ergen, who testified in the trial earlier this week, said that he bought the debt on his own behalf and not for Dish.

A hedge fund manager who handled debt purchases at the center of a trial over the bankruptcy of LightSquared said yesterday he did not recall whether Dish Network Corp Chairman Charles Ergen was buying the debt to influence the bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. Stephen Ketchum, the head of Sound Point Capital, also testified that he could not recall how badly Ergen wanted the debt of the wireless communications company, apparently contradicting an earlier deposition and drawing a reminder from the judge that he was under oath. Ergen's motivation for buying LightSquared's debt is central to the trial, which is taking place in the U.S. bankruptcy court in Manhattan. LightSquared and its owner, Harbinger Capital Partners, accuse Ergen of improperly buying the debt as a way for Dish to take control of LightSquared's wireless broadband rights. Ergen has said he was buying the debt for his own purposes.

Edgenet Inc. filed for chapter 11 protection on Tuesday in an effort to safeguard the planned sale of the company during a fight among creditors, who are battling over how to split up the proceeds, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Citing "the real likelihood that the sale process will be stymied due to the dispute" between secured creditors owed a combined $103 million, the Atlanta company sought bankruptcy protection to ease the sale of its business. Edgenet provides technology that supports the sale of goods and services across mobile devices, on the web and in stores. No committed buyer has been signed up yet, but Edgenet Chief Financial Officer Juliet Reising said in court papers that the company is in "serious discussions with possible purchasers" and "strongly" believes a purchaser will be identified soon to lead a bankruptcy auction.

Wireless network provider FiberTower Corp. today will ask a judge to approve a bankruptcy-exit plan that would hand ownership of the San Francisco company to its bondholders, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported today. Court papers show that the bondholders, who are owed about $132 million, voted unanimously in favor of the restructuring plan that would give them a 100 percent stake in the reorganized business and wipe out the shares that once traded on Nasdaq.

Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen said that by late 2011 his company didn’t consider LightSquared Inc. an attractive acquisition, while he remained interested in investing personally, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Ergen, testifying yesterday in bankruptcy court, is accused of secretly accumulating $1 billion in LightSquared debt so he could control the broadband services provider’s reorganization and use its wireless spectrum to help Dish expand into wireless. LightSquared, controlled by Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners LLC, sued Ergen and Dish in August seeking to disallow the $1 billion claim. Ergen, who last week sought to drop his bid for some of the company’s airwaves, said yesterday that he saw LightSquared as an opportunity for himself, not Dish.

Dish Network Corp. Chairman Charles Ergen is set to defend his purchase of $1 billion in debt in bankrupt wireless provider LightSquared Inc. against claims by Philip Falcone that the investment was improper, Bloomberg News reported today. Falcone, whose Harbinger Capital Partners LLC controls LightSquared, has accused Ergen of surreptitiously buying the debt to hijack LightSquared’s reorganization and get control of the company’s airwaves. Ergen, who is scheduled to testify today before Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, has defended the debt purchases as a smart investment and said that he made no “false representations” in pursuing it. Falcone is seeking to disallow the $1 billion claim. He has proposed that he hold onto the Reston, Va.-based LightSquared, into which he has already sunk $3 billion. He may to testify later in the trial.

Dish Network Corp.’s motion to drop its $2.2 billion offer for airwaves owned by LightSquared Inc. became the focus of a trial over how Dish Chairman Charles Ergen bought debt in Philip Falcone’s bankrupt wireless broadband company, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Dish sent a termination letter just before a trial began yesterday bankruptcy court, where the satellite-television company and Ergen are accused of improperly acquiring the LightSquared debt. Lawyers for LightSquared told Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman that Dish’s latest move may be a gambit to drive down the price of the assets. The lawyers said Ergen began stockpiling the debt in 2011, the year before LightSquared’s bankruptcy, and spent $800 million of his personal wealth, including money in his daughter’s trust fund.

Philip Falcone’s LightSquared Inc. is set to open a trial accusing Charlie Ergen of improperly snapped up debt in the company to hijack its reorganization and get airwaves worth billions of dollars for Dish Network Corp., even as Dish has said it may withdraw its bid, Bloomberg News reported today. LightSquared, the satellite-based wireless provider controlled by Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners, is scheduled to go to trial against Ergen today before Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman. The Reston, Va.-based company filed for bankruptcy in 2012 after failing to win regulatory approval to use the airwaves.

Defunct telecoms equipment maker Nortel Networks Inc. received court approval yesterday for a $75 million deal it called a "significant milestone" in ending its five-year bankruptcy, Reuters reported yesterday. In return for the payment, insolvent Nortel affiliates in Europe will drop claims seeking more than $3 billion from Nortel's U.S. bankruptcy proceeding. Nortel's global business, once worth $250 billion with 93,000 employees, collapsed in January 2009. Its businesses and patents were quickly auctioned off, raising $7.5 billion. Yesterday's settlement resolves some of the biggest claims against the U.S. estate, including that it allegedly short-changed a pension in Britain. The agreement does not affect a looming fight over how to divide the billions in cash among insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings in different countries.

A section of LightSquared Inc. lenders are opposing the company's decision to seek a new financing arrangement as part of its plan to exit bankruptcy, Reuters reported today. LightSquared in December proposed a new bankruptcy exit plan with financing from Fortress Investment Group and other backers, as the U.S. wireless communications company seeks to avoid a sale to highest bidder Dish Network Corp. The new plan replaced one based on an auction of the company's assets. LightSquared scrapped that sale after Dish emerged as the only qualified bidder, with a $2.2 billion offer and terms that LightSquared found unappealing. LightSquared had asked to be allowed to implement the new plan without going back to creditors to get their approval, saying that the latest deal increases the recovery for creditors. However, lenders including US Bank and MAST Capital Management said yesterday that the new arrangement violates an earlier deal, which prohibited LightSquared from seeking alternative financing unless the creditors were first paid in full.