Beleaguered Chicago-area builder Neumann Homes remained on the verge of filing its chapter 11 petition, but still had not submitted the filing nearly a week after announcing that the company would enter into bankruptcy, the Chicago Tribune reported today. Company CEO Kenneth P. Neumann said yesterday that he still wasn’t sure when the bankruptcy petition would be filed because discussions with the Warrenville, Ill.-based firm’s eight lenders were ongoing. Neumann Homes said on Oct. 22 that it was unable to secure funding to operate, owing to “the significant downturn” in the Detroit, Chicago and Denver markets, where it does business, and that it had closed all its sales, production and customer-service offices. “Bankruptcy is usually very carefully orchestrated,” said Anthony Sabino, a bankruptcy attorney and professor of law at St. John’s University. “You don’t issue a press release until you’ve filed chapter 11, either five minutes after it’s official, or you issue a press release that morning while somebody is going downtown to make the filing.”

Mario Lemieux, who was owed $32 million by the Pittsburgh Penguins in deferred compensation on the contract in effect when he retired as a player in 1997, will receive $21 million in the wake of a periodic refinancing of the team’s debt, the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette reported on Friday. Lemieux will not get any additional money on that contract in the future and is believed to be the only unsecured creditor from the bankruptcy to receive less than 100 percent of money owed. California businessman Ron Burkle, who shares control of the franchise with Lemieux, and the other investors who purchased a piece of it when it came out of bankruptcy in 1999 will be given varying percentages of their original outlay in conjunction with the refinancing.

Some financial services firms are trying to clear a regulatory path that would let them buy out pension plans, freeing employers from pension obligations while potentially giving profit-driven financiers direct control over the retirement savings of millions of Americans, the Washington Post reported yesterday.  The interested players range from venerable Wall Street banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Citigroup to start-ups, including one co-founded five months ago by Bradley D. Belt, the former executive director of the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These groups say the buyouts would not only benefit companies that want to get off the hook of pension responsibilities, but also help workers by putting their retirement assets in the hands of shrewd money managers. Critics counter that buyouts are a dangerous idea that would further diminish pension benefits at a time when baby boomers are beginning to retire and longer life expectancies mean more years of pension checks. Opposition groups have expressed their mistrust of the motives of the financial firms seeking a piece of the $2.3 trillion in assets in corporate pension plans around the country.

Corporations are falling short in explaining to investors how executives are compensated and for what, Securities and Exchange Commission officials said Tuesday in their first review of corporate filings since new pay disclosure rules were put in place, the New York Times reported today. The SEC called on corporations to give investors more insight into how they made compensation decisions and to ensure that proxies were “clear, concise and understandable.” Corporate boards, regulators said, could also do a better job in discussing how they chose performance targets, severance packages and the peer companies they used as comparisons for their pay practices. Federal regulators spent this summer reviewing compensation reports, sending inquiries to companies and chief executives they believed had failed to provide enough information.

Aegis Mortgage Corp. asked the court overseeing its bankruptcy proceedings to dismiss two of its subsidiary debtors from chapter 11 following the Sept. 28 closing of the sale of Aegis’ loan platform assets to Ranieri & Co. Inc., Bankruptcy Law360 reported on Friday.Aegis Loan Servicing LP and AMC Insurance Agency of Texas Inc. are holding companies, one for mortgages and one for licenses, and should now be dismissed from bankruptcy because Ranieri purchased the equity in the two companies. The only known potential creditor of Aegis Loan Servicing is Residential Funding Co. LLC, although there are certain potential de minimus tax claims and regulatory fee claims, and the only known potential creditor of AMC Insurance is Madeleine LLC, along with potential de minimus tax claims, Aegis said, adding that both Madeleine and Residential Funding had been notified of the pending motion.

Struggling video-rental company Movie Gallery aims to file for bankruptcy protection under a pre-negotiated deal with key creditors under which the company will convert its bonds into stock, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The Dothan, Ala., company will file for bankruptcy this month and hopes to emerge from chapter 11 in early 2008. Under the pre-negotiated plan, Movie Gallery would convert its bonds to stock, and a portion of its second-lien debt also will be converted to stock. The company had $1.2 billion in debt as of July, including $322 million in bonds, $175 million in second-lien debt, and $600 million in first-lien debt. Movie Gallery operates more than 4,600 video rental stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In July, the company failed to meet financial covenants of its senior loan from Goldman Sachs Credit Partners. The company attributed the covenant breaches to softer-than-expected second-quarter results.

Even though General Motors and the United Automobile Workers have just reached a major settlement aimed at easing the automaker’s health care liability, the union’s umbrella organization says the company’s board has not done all that it could to hold drug costs down, the New York Times reported today. In a letter yesterday to federal securities regulators, the AFL-CIO criticized GM for keeping Nexium, an expensive name-brand medicine, on its health plan’s approved-drug list last year at a time when some other big companies were dropping the drug in favor of cheaper generics. Other companies also include Nexium on their preferred-drugs lists, but GM’s two main domestic rivals have taken steps to limit the use of Nexium. The AFL-CIO letter notes that Percy Barnevik, the retired chairman of the drug’s maker, AstraZeneca, is a longtime member of the GM board. It did not, however, provide any evidence that Barnevik played a role in keeping Nexium on the preferred list or that his presence on the board influenced the decision by GM’s pharmacy benefits manager.

A private-equity group tried to revive takeover talks with Sallie Mae yesterday by proposing a cheaper purchase price, but the student lending giant rejected the $21 billion offer, the Washington Post reported today. The revised deal is about $4.2 billion less than what the two sides had agreed to in April. The buyers’ group, however, said that it would be willing to make up the difference if Sallie Mae exceeded certain profit projections over the next five years. The buyout group told Sallie Mae that it would keep the offer on the table until Oct. 9. The suitors are led by private-equity firm J.C. Flowers and include Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase. While they could pay a $900 million breakup fee, they have indicated that the circumstances surrounding the sale have been affected by the turmoil in the credit markets and a move by the government to cut subsidies to student lenders. Those factors are significant enough, they contend, to trigger a “material adverse effect” clause that allows them to cancel the deal without paying the breakup fee.

Dura Automotive Systems Inc. has filed an amended disclosure statement and an amended reorganization plan in its chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in order to account for its creditors’ committee’s newfound support, Bankruptcy Law360 reported yesterday. Under the terms of Dura’s proposed plan, creditors will be entitled to a full cash payout of debtor-in-possession claims, administrative expenses, priority claims and second-lien secured claims. The proposed plan will also provide for the conversion of senior notes and general unsecured claims of more than $75,000 into between 57.4 to 60.7 percent of common stock in the reorganized company, and cash payment in lieu of an equity distribution of all trade claims and general unsecured claims of $75,000 or less. There will be no recoveries for subordinated notes’ and convertible preferred securities’ claims, nor will the company’s common stock holders receive any recoveries under the proposed plan.