Secured lenders owed $357 million and an assortment of creditors say AbitibiBowater Inc. owes them a better explanation of its bankruptcy-exit proposal, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Term lenders said the newsprint producer is unfairly capping what they can recover, while depriving them of the right to vote on its Chapter 11 plan. The plan promises payment in full to secured lenders, including the term lenders, and lists them as "unimpaired," meaning AbitibiBowater doesn't need to poll them.

Nortel Networks Corp. has complained to a U.S. bankruptcy court that Avaya Inc. is balking at handing over $22 million of the agreed $900 million purchase price for Nortel's enterprise business, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. As it musters cash to pay creditors, Nortel says, it needs a court order to force Avaya to turn over the money, which it says is being withheld in violation of the sale agreement.

No company has the ability to pay unlimited claims, even one that earned $16.6 billion last year and more than $20 billion annually in the prior four years. At the same time, no one has any idea how big BP’s damages will be, Bloomberg reported in a commentary. That hasn’t stopped Wall Street analysts from churning out estimates that move up in lockstep with the number of barrels thought to be leaking from the collapsed well each day. How many companies are willing to face unlimited civil claims, the prospect of criminal prosecution and daily excoriation by the U.S.

The chief executive of General Motors Co.'s Adam Opel GmbH division, Nick Reilly, said he wants to complete almost all of the planned restructuring measures by the end of this year in a bid to turn around the business as soon as possible, Dow Jones reported. Thanks to the revamped Meriva and Astra models, Opel's market share in the second half of the year is expected to rise to slightly more than 9% from currently just under 9%, Reilly said.

Nortel Networks Corp. has moved to shut off health care to retirees and payments to disabled employees in the U.S. as it prepares to distribute $2.8 billion in cash and deal with patents that could be worth another $1 billion, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Papers filed recently in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court say the former telecommunications equipment giant wants to end health care and life insurance benefits on Aug. 31 for more than 4,000 retired people or their dependents, and cut off long-term disability payments to another 280 people.

Barclays Plc's President Robert Diamond said on Monday that the British bank's comments to the media about its deal to acquire parts of Lehman Brothers may not have been official disclosure to the U.S. bankruptcy court, which approved the takeover, Reuters reported. At issue is whether the British bank received an unfair $11 billion windfall when it acquired parts of Lehman Brothers after the investment bank's collapse in Sept., 2008. Diamond said that Barclays had tried to craft a deal to take over Lehman's core U.S. brokerage business in a way that Barclays would see a gain.

Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., a key contributor to AbitibiBowater Inc.'s proposed $500 million bankruptcy-exit financing package, refused to move forward with the deal after a bankruptcy judge said the company couldn't grant the investor immunity from a possible legal challenge, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Fairfax and two other AbitibiBowater bondholders that were to backstop a debt offering walked away from the deal this weekend, causing the newsprint maker to scramble for other options, said company attorney Kelley A.

A bankruptcy judge on Friday refused to approve a $500 million financing deal for AbitibiBowater Inc. as long as that deal grants key investor Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. immunity from a possible legal challenge, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Judge Kevin J. Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., said he would approve the financing deal, which AbitibiBowater claims is essential to its effort to raise more than $1 billion to fund it emergence from Chapter 11, if the company dropped the Fairfax release.

Movie Gallery Inc. said Wednesday that its Canadian subsidiary has begun liquidating all 181 of its video rental stores, including 50 stores that were potentially up for sale but no longer are, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported on an Associated Press story. Net proceeds from the sale of inventory worth an estimated 48 million Canadian dollars ($47 million) will be used to fund a proposal by the company to pay its Canadian creditors, including landlords and employees, Movie Gallery said. The Canadian unit, Movie Gallery Canada Inc., is not in bankruptcy proceedings.

General Motors Co.'s European division said Wednesday it has decided to withdraw all applications for state aid in the region and finance the planned turnaround with a further €1.4 billion of funds from its parent, marking a broad strategic shift after the German government last week refused to provide aid to the U.S. auto maker, Dow Jones reported.