United States

Aerospace giant Airbus says it’s confused as to why Mexicana continues to order replacement parts even though the Mexican airline hasn’t operated flights for the past month, The Wall Street Journal Bankruptcy Beat blog reported. Airbus is asking the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan for vendor protections, such as assurance that it will be paid within seven days of delivering parts, after it received several unexpected orders from Mexicana in the past two weeks.

AbitibiBowater took another step towards ending 18 months of court protection from creditors when its restructuring plan won the required support from a majority of its U.S. creditors, the Canadian Press reported. As was the case last week with votes in Canada, creditors of Bowater Canada Finance Corp. failed to approve the plan. Aurelius Capital Management and Contrarian Capital Management opposed the plan as noteholders of the special purpose subsidiary which has no operating assets. BCFC will be excluded from the Chapter 11 restructuring in the U.S.

Riviera Marine (Int.) Pty Ltd., part of a group of Australian companies that manufacture and sell luxury boats, is seeking bankruptcy protection in the U.S., Trade Only Today reported. Riviera CEO John Anderson said in a statement that the filing is not a new proceeding, but "merely a request that the U.S. courts recognize the [Deed of Company Arrangement] process, which was officially completed by Riviera in June 2010 and that allows us to complete our restructure of both our Australian and U.S. operations." The U.S. filing follows a voluntary administration in Australia.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised Goldman Sachs as the investment bank was today handed down a multimillion-pound fine by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), LegalWeek reported. The regulator has ordered the investment banking giant to pay £17.5m as a penalty for neglecting to inform it that its executive director Fabrice Toure was subject to a fraud investigation by US financial authorities when he became an FSA-approved person upon relocating to the UK in 2008.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is challenging AbitibiBowater Inc. over Chapter 11 plan provisions he says violate the Bankruptcy Code and rob taxing authorities of the rights to recoup past taxes, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. In a filing with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Abbott invoked a March U.S. Supreme Court ruling that he says puts the court under a duty to reject AbitibiBowater's Chapter 11 plan. The high court's decision came in a case involving student-loan debt.

A Barclays PLC accounting executive said Thursday that the $45.5 billion price placed on Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collateral was a fair-market number reached after valuing Lehman assets, not an agreed upon discount price to sweeten the deal for Barclays, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. Gary Romain, head of technical accounting for Barclays, testified Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan in Lehman's lawsuit accusing Barclays of arranging a "secret" $5 billion discount when it purchased Lehman's broker-dealer unit in September 2008.

Truvo Group's unsecured creditors say the European directory publisher's proposed plan to hand control of the company to its senior lenders is a "sham," Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. In papers filed Thursday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, the creditors allege that the Chapter 11 filing by Truvo USA and four other holding companies at the top of Truvo Group's corporate structure is a scheme to sever unsecured bondholders' liens against the company's operating assets and push through a debt-for-equity swap with secured lenders.

The largest single shareholder of Onco Petroleum is trying to pry the troubled company’s affairs out the hands of a court-appointed receiver, The London Free Press reported. Terri Ramage, wife of Onco founder and former president Robert Vanier, said Onco officials and the receiver are acting without the consent of Onco’s 1,441 shareholders. She wants the receivership halted and a shareholder meeting convened. “Shareholders will suffer irreparable harm if the annulments are not granted,” she said Thursday in Windsor court.

AbitibiBowater Inc., the world’s biggest newsprint maker by capacity, won court approval to borrow as much as $1.35 billion to help fund its exit from bankruptcy, Bloomberg reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin J. Carey gave the company permission to obtain the funds after no objection to the financing proposals was filed, according to court documents filed yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware. Units of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Citigroup Inc. will be the agents for a $600 million asset-based loan and each will contribute $100 million, court papers show.

Canada agreed Tuesday to pay newsprint maker AbitibiBowater more than $100 million to settle the company's claim over what it said was an illegal seizure of its assets, the Associated Press reported. The forestry giant had sought $500 million under the provisions of the North American Free Trade Agreement after Canada's Atlantic-coast province of Newfoundland expropriated some of its assets.