Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Friday, Aug. 5. Voyager Digital is releasing $350 million in customer funds held at a custodian bank, a slice of the overall user money tied up in the crypto firm's bankruptcy case. AMC Entertainment, which narrowly skirted chapter 11 during the pandemic, is issuing a dividend in the form of preferred stock. And a Texas jury issued a $4.1 million verdict against Alex Jones, whose Infowars media business has turned to chapter 11 to try to weather defamation lawsuits against him.

Voyager Digital cleared to return $270 million to customers. Cryptocurrency brokerage firm Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. secured approval to return some customer cash held at a custodian bank.

Judge Michael Wiles of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, who is overseeing Voyager’s bankruptcy, ruled on Thursday that the company provided “sufficient basis” to support its contention that customers should be allowed access to the custodial account held at Metropolitan Commercial Bank. Voyager's chapter 11 filing has tied up the holdings of their customers, who are realizing how little control they have over their digital currencies and that they aren’t likely to recover in full through bankruptcy court.

Although Voyager had asked for court permission to honor customer withdrawal requests for cash funds held at Metropolitan Commercial, the company views the roughly $1.3 billion in digital assets on its platform as belonging to the bankruptcy estate that will be shared by all creditors.

AMC issues ‘Ape’ dividend. AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. said Thursday that it plans to issue a dividend to all common shareholders in the form of preferred shares, after it had difficulty issuing more common shares. The cinema chain, which skirted chapter 11 during the pandemic and became a darling of meme-stock investors, is paying the dividend in the form of preferred equity units, which the company has applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “APE.”

The name is a nod to the crowd of individual investors, known as apes, who helped rescue the chain from the brink of bankruptcy.

AMC has tried to obtain shareholder approval to enable it to issue more common shares, but had difficulty corralling its investor base to support the initiative, in part due to some investors’ fears of dilution. The company’s new move to instead offer preferred equity units is a workaround to that constraint, and frees up a substantial number of units that it could sell as it continues to face challenges due to the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, a person familiar with the matter said.

The jury verdict was for actual damages, for the harm suffered directly by the parents of the murdered child. The total amount awarded against Mr. Jones in his Austin hometown could imperil the popular broadcaster and his Infowars empire, which has sought bankruptcy protection. Mr. Jones, in his testimony, said he would be unable to pay any significant damages award.

• Previous: Families of Sandy Hook victims have accused Mr. Jones of siphoning significant amounts from Infowars’ parent company before he put the business into bankruptcy.

Final whistle sounds for Evergrande's soccer ambitions. The Chinese property giant is canceling a contract to build what was slated to be the world’s largest soccer stadium, and is returning land-use rights for the site. Evergrande said it would receive a refund equivalent to about $818 million, and intends to use the money to help repay a mountain of debt.

The property conglomerate, which has around $300 billion in liabilities, defaulted on its U.S. dollar bonds last year and has also failed to pay some of its debt in mainland China. The massive stadium project had been a high-profile symbol of the excesses of Evergrande, which spent freely on activities far removed from its core real-estate business in the years when it was flush with cash.

Genapsys denied approval for bankruptcy loan, sale process. Bankrupt venture-backed DNA-sequencing business Genapsys Inc. failed to win court approval for an additional $3 million in chapter 11 financing as well as procedures to sell the company's assets.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company sought protection from creditors last month, blaming mounting litigation costs and corporate governance disputes. Company founders are arguing that the bankruptcy was filed without proper corporate authority.

On Thursday, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Judge Brendan Shannon said significant concerns have been raised about the propriety of the chapter 11 filing.

The judge said he didn't want to issue a final ruling on financing or a sale process until a hearing later this month on the founders' request to dismiss the bankruptcy or have an independent trustee oversee the company. In court papers, founders Hesaam Esfandyarpour and Kosar Parizi have alleged that Genapsys' board was improperly constituted following a financing deal with Farallon Capital Management. — Becky Yerak

Carvana cuts costs with used-car demand under pressure. Online used-car dealer Carvana Co. said it is aggressively cutting costs as demand from consumers remains under pressure and the company faces the prospect of an economic downturn.

Carvana—an early pandemic star that has struggled during the recovery—pledged in April to rein in expenses after it reported its first-ever quarterly-sales decline and said it would no longer provide guidance for the year. The company said it misjudged customer demand, planning for growth while rising interest rates and high inflation made vehicle purchases unaffordable for many consumers. The following month it laid off 12% of its workforce. Now Carvana is working to slash costs and improve efficiency across the company, which is still burning cash after 10 years in business.

Former Puerto Rico governor arrested on bribery charges. Wanda Vázquez Garced, was arrested and charged with participating in a bribery scheme to finance her 2020 gubernatorial campaign. She was sworn in as governor in August 2019, in the wake of a scandal involving the former governor and a constitutional crisis over who would succeed him.

The alleged bribery scheme took place from December 2019 through June 2020 and involved bank executives, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a political consultant, according to the Justice Department. The executives, Julio Martin Herrera Velutini and Frances Diaz, are the owner and president of an international bank that operates in San Juan and was the subject of an examination by Puerto Rico's bank regulator.

• Previous: Puerto Rico won court approval to leave bankruptcy through the largest-ever restructuring of U.S. municipal debt.

• Arena Investors raises $930 million for credit-focused deals. The New York-based investment firm has raised $930 million for its latest opportunistic investment strategy, seeing potential deal targets in the economic downturn. Arena’s predecessor fund closed in December 2020. The firm used the fresh capital to make credit-oriented investments in industries hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic and said that through June it has produced an estimated net return of 1.44 times invested capital.

U.S. hiring likely slowed in July as recession fears grew. The U.S. labor market likely cooled again in July, economists estimate, as the economy faltered under the weight of high inflation and Federal Reserve interest-rate increases to cool demand.

Employers are estimated to have created 258,000 jobs in July, with the unemployment rate staying steady at 3.6%, according to economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. That would mark a significant slowing of payroll growth in the first half of the year that was faster than during any other post-World War II period when the economy began contracting.

• Mortgage rates dropped below 5% for the first time since April.
• Why are businesses still hiring as recession risks mount?

Share your tips, suggestions and feedback with the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy team: Soma Biswas; Alexander Gladstone; Jodi Xu Klein; Akiko Matsuda; Jonathan Randles; Alexander Saeedy; Andrew Scurria; Becky Yerak. 

Follow us on Twitter: @SomaBisWSJ; @gladstonea; @jodixu; @AskAkiko; @Sparkyrandles; @ajsaeedy; @AndrewScurria; @beckyyerak.