Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Tuesday, May 27. In today's briefing, a Texas federal judge expressed concern that close relationships among bankruptcy lawyers may be compromising the integrity of litigation tied to a former judge’s secret romance with a lawyer who regularly appeared before him. 

A federal judge in Texas questioned whether close ties among law firms are affecting litigation over a former bankruptcy judge’s undisclosed romance with a lawyer who appeared in his court on dozens of cases.

U.S. District Judge Alia Moses indicated at a Thursday hearing that she had reservations about the “small world” of bankruptcy professionals attempting to resolve lawsuits resulting from the ethics scandal that forced David R. Jones off the bench in 2023.

Moses convened lawyers to the federal district court in Houston to consider a lawsuit filed by former shipping executive Morton Bouchard, whose business filed for chapter 11 in Houston in 2020. Moses also examined a U.S. watchdog’s civil case against the law firm Jackson Walker, where Jones’s longtime romantic partner Elizabeth Freeman worked as a partner from 2018 to 2022.

Wolfspeed is planning to defer a June 2 interest payment on some of its debt, it said Friday. The U.S. chip component maker is preparing to file for bankruptcy within a matter of weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

The company said in a Friday Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it plans to enter into a grace period for an interest payment due June 2. Wolfspeed also said it “continues to engage in ongoing, constructive discussions with its financial stakeholders around a comprehensive solution” to support its ongoing growth. It said previously that it is considering both in and out of court restructuring options.

The company also announced that it appointed a chief operating officer, David Emerson, who is joining the company from consulting firm Triphammer Solutions. Emerson worked at Wolfspeed previously as executive vice president of its LED products business, which has since been sold. Emerson left the company in 2018.

--Alicia McElhaney

Nippon Steel received a conditional green light from President Trump to take control of U.S. Steel under what he described as a partnership.

Key aspects of the deal still need to be ironed out. But Trump’s announcement signaled that the Tokyo-based company could eventually enter the American steel market and make the big investments envisioned when it reached a $14.1 billion deal to take over U.S. Steel.

Trump defined the agreement as a partnership, spurring some confusion at the companies on Friday afternoon, according to people involved in the deal talks. Both Nippon and U.S. Steel were seeking more guidance from the administration about how much ownership Nippon could ultimately gain.

Booz Allen plans to cut roughly 2,500 jobs after the company warned that it is feeling the effects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal contracting.

Shares fell 16.5% on Friday after Booz Allen executives told investors that the firm is seeing a slowdown in some government spending and that it expected its business to be under pressure in the first half of the fiscal year.

Booz, which makes 98% of its $12 billion in annual revenue from government-related work, is especially vulnerable to the Trump administration’s plans to cut spending on federal contracts.

Private-fund managers are using April’s market mayhem as a political tool in their campaign to pry open a vast new market: your retirement account.

Firms such as Apollo Global Management and Blackstone BX  argue that when turmoil strikes public markets, Americans would be better off investing in their private-equity and private-credit funds. Critics say the firms are turning to the “retail” market because they have tapped out big pension funds—and that private markets are a bad fit for individual savers.

What are everyday savers to make of this debate? A clutch of newish books helps explain how the so-called alternative-investment industry has taken over Wall Street and increasingly influences the U.S. economy.

• Republican senators John Cornyn and Chuck Grassley and Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar are rolling out a bipartisan measure to protect sensitive genetic data in response to privacy concerns sparked by 23andMe's bankruptcy, Fox News Digital has learned. (Fox News)
• Groups led by affiliates of Contrarian Funds, Gold Reserve and Vitol are working on improved offers for the parent of Venezuela-owned refiner Citgo Petroleum as the list of potential bidders narrows, sources close to the preparations said. (Reuters)
• Kohl’s Corp. is considering cutting ties with the search firm that helped recruit its last chief executive officer, who the company fired just months into his tenure. (Bloomberg)

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