Next Week in Bankruptcy

Supermarket operator Haggen Holdings LLC heads to court twice next week. Tuesday, the company is looking for final approval for a bankruptcy loan so it can cover payroll and other expenses during its stay in bankruptcy. The grocer, which won interim approval of the financing last month, secured $200 million in financing from lenders led by PNC Bank.

Thursday, Haggen is back in the Wilmington, Del., bankruptcy court looking for permission to close 100 stores. The company needs to pay off lenders who helped finance its deal to buy nearly 150 stores earlier this year from grocery chain Albertsons. Haggen has hired Hilco Merchant Resources LLC to help it liquidate the stores. In court papers, Haggen said that given its “severe liquidity constraints and the significant operating losses…it is imperative that the Store Closing Sales with respect to such stores commence immediately.”

Haggen filed for bankruptcy protection last month, less than a year after the deal with Albertsons increased its number of stores to 164 from 18, with locations throughout the Pacific Northwest. Earlier this week, Haggen announced plans to sell off 36 stores to buyers who would keep those locations open.

Friday in Manhattan, the once-popular Columbia House music brand is set to hit the auction block as well as its leftover DVD club business. The company doesn’t currently have a lead bidder in place, though three “very serious” potential buyers have expressed interest, Scott Griffin, a lawyer for Filmed Entertainment, has said. If all goes well, the company will have a hearing to approve the auction results on Oct. 20.

Columbia House was founded in 1955 as a division of CBS Inc. and once offered CDs, vinyl, 8-tracks and cassette tapes for as little as a penny. But digital music formats such as MP3s began disrupting the market for CDs in the late 1990s.

The company, which abandoned its CD business in 2010, filed for chapter 11 protection in early August. Its current owner, Pride Tree Holdings Inc., is not in bankruptcy.

Also Friday, a judge will be asked to dismiss the bankruptcy case of Endeavour International Corp.

Endeavour, a Houston-based oil-and-gas firm, is asking for a so-called structured dismissal of the case, which it said in court papers would “provide an orderly end to these chapter 11 cases and is in the best interest of the debtors’ creditors and estates.” Endeavour’s request has drawn fire from junior creditors who claim the deal is skewed to benefit the company’s foreign affiliates and top creditors at their expense.

If Endeavour’s bankruptcy case isn’t dismissed, it could be converted to a chapter 7 liquidation. Judge Kevin J. Carey of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, indicated at a hearing last month  that he was considering converting the case to chapter 7, which would put the company in the hands of a court-appointed trustee.

Endeavour has  made plans to hand control of its U.K. assets—which make up more than 90% of its business—to a group of senior bondholders in a debt-for-equity swap. In addition to handing off its U.K. assets, Endeavour has also lined up buyers for its U.S. assets. Those sales were conditionally approved by Judge Carey in August.

Endeavour filed for bankruptcy last October with a prenegotiated plan to cut $568 million in debt from its balance sheet and free up about $50 million in annual cash flow. But falling oil prices forced Endeavour to abandon that plan, and the company instead decided to place its assets on the auction block.

-Peg Brickley, Katy Stech and Melanie Cohen contributed to this article.

Write to Tom Corrigan at [email protected]