Bankruptcy

CHICAGO — Redwood Capital Investments LLC’s successful bid Wednesday to acquire most of bankrupt Erickson Retirement Communities’ assets did not include the Monarch Landing, Sedgebrook, and Linden Ponds facilities so the fate of their municipal debt now becomes the focus of a new round of negotiations.

CHICAGO — Redwood Capital Investments LLC’s successful bid Wednesday to acquire most of bankrupt Erickson Retirement Communities’ assets did not include the Monarch Landing, Sedgebrook, and Linden Ponds facilities so the fate of their municipal debt now becomes the focus of a new round of negotiations.

The Vallejo, Calif., City Council unanimously approved a bankruptcy workout plan last week that outlines the city's aims in negotiations to end the biggest municipal bankruptcy since the mid-1990s.

State and local governments will be able to buy and temporarily hold their tax-exempt bonds, including auction-rate securities, for another year without causing the bonds to be considered reissued for tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service said yesterday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Monday reinstated former Jefferson County, Ala., commissioner Gary White's 2008 conspiracy and bribery convictions and returned the case to Birmingham for sentencing.

Now that the first shoe has dropped in the Justice Department's criminal investigation of alleged anti-competitive activities in the municipal derivatives and investment markets, what comes next in 2010?

The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled last week in a unanimous decision that Pulaski County levied a 20-year, one-mill increase in the property tax rate a year earlier than it should have.

The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board on Friday filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission a revised proposal that would temporarily give issuers more time to voluntarily disclose annual financial information to EMMA for special designation.

Voters in Riverside County, Calif., last week approved a proposal from the bankrupt Valley Health System to sell the public district's two hospitals and its other real estate assets to a for-profit group of local physicians.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority did not violate New York laws when it agreed to sell the development rights over rail yards in Brooklyn to Forest City Ratner Cos., a state Supreme Court judge ruled last week.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving forward with a sweeping but informal inquiry into the manner in which Miami presented its financial condition in offering documents for bonds issued in 2007.

Robert Bradbury, the former chairman and chief executive officer of the now-defunct underwriting firm Dolphin & Bradbury Inc., was sentenced by a federal judge in Philadelphia yesterday to a 366-day prison sentence and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine in connection with his pleading guilty to one criminal count of securities fraud.

WASHINGTON — As the House Friday approved the most sweeping financial regulatory reform legislation since the Depression, municipal issuers are debating the effectiveness of a little-noticed provision that would require rating agencies to rate municipal and other debt on the same scale and based on the likelihood of repayment to investors.

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission has barred ex-Wachovia Securities LLC broker Guy P. Riordan from associating with any broker or dealer, and ordered him to pay a $500,000 penalty and to disgorge almost $938,354 in ill-gotten gains and interest for securities fraud violations stemming from a pay-to-play scheme involving the former treasurer of New Mexico.

WASHINGTON — The House is poised to approve a massive financial regulatory reform bill today, after considering a series of amendments late into last night.

SAN FRANCISCO — A special ­election Tuesday may hasten the end of Valley Health System’s two-year-old Chapter 9 bankruptcy case and lead to the ­redemption of the Southern California public hospital district’s outstanding tax-exempt bonds.

CHICAGO — The Menasha Common Council and city utilities commission this week advanced plans that could resolve the Wisconsin city’s debt troubles and a bondholder lawsuit stemming from its now-shuttered steam plant by selling the facility to WPPI Energy.

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that it has settled its civil litigation against Robert Bradbury, the former chairman and chief executive officer of the now defunct underwriting firm Dolphin & Bradbury Inc., and barred him from the securities markets.

WASHINGTON — House Financial Services Committee members and their colleagues have drafted almost 250 amendments that they would like to see added to the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, including one that would prohibit state and local governments and public pension funds from entering into swaps.

The Justice Department must release details from 300 municipal reinvestment contracts that allegedly were rigged, as well as the identities of the alleged co-conspirators involved in those transactions, to attorneys representing CDR Financial Products and three individuals named in a federal indictment in late October, a judge in New York said Friday.