FISHER CAPITAL MANAGEMENT: The Daily Docket: Lehman Gets OK To Buy Notes

By Patrick Fitzgerald

A judge on Wednesday approved a nearly $1 billion sale of notes to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. from its German affiliate, part of a larger settlement between Lehman’s bankruptcy estate and its second-largest foreign affiliate. Read the Daily Bankruptcy Review story here.

Also in today’s DBR, companies in Dubai, Mumbai and Shanghai are increasingly turning to U.S. bankruptcy courts when hunting for new acquisitions, and hedge fund manager Tricadia Capital Management’s purchase of nearly a quarter of Corus Bankshares Inc.’s securities related to collateralized-debt obligations could break a deadlock in the Chicago bank holding company’s Chapter 11 case. In DBR Small Cap, Rock & Republic Enterprises Inc. won approval of its Chapter 11 plan, which contemplates a $57 million sale of the company’s intellectual property.

(The Daily Bankruptcy Review and DBR Small Cap are daily newsletters with comprehensive coverage and analysis of emerging and in-progress insolvencies and turnarounds. For a two-week trial to DBR, click here. For DBR SC click here.)

The Wall Street Journal reports CIT Group Inc. came to market with a $2 billion, two-part offering of new senior debt Wednesday, marking the middle-market lender’s first high-yield bond issue since it emerged from bankruptcy in late 2009.

The city of Hamtramck reached a deal with neighboring Detroit to settle a dispute over shared tax revenue from an auto plant, easing budget pressure that had threatened to push the small enclave into bankruptcy, reports WSJ.

The New York Mets owners may default on their debt if they pay $100 million or more to settle a lawsuit brought by the trustee liquidating Bernard L. Madoff’s firm, according to Bloomberg.

U.S. District Judge John Fullam, who presided over such notable cases as the Abscam political-corruption probe and the landmark bankruptcy of Penn Central, said Wednesday that he planned to step down, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

The president of Seahawk Drilling says in a Washington Post op-ed that the bankruptcy of his company was preventable and lays the blame for its woes on the U.S. government.

More hedge funds will invest in increasingly risky, distressed assets this year and expect to make a greater amount of money doing it, according to Reuters