Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Wednesday, September 21. Crypto exchanges FTX and Binance are the leading bidders for Voyager, the bankrupt crypto lender, the Journal reports. Infowars failed to win court approval to retain key professional advisers and now faces an outside probe of its finances. And a bankruptcy judge denied a $12 million fee to PJT Partners on an airline restructuring that dragged on.

Binance, FTX make top bids for lender Voyager. Crypto exchanges FTX and Binance have made the leading bids in an auction for the assets of bankrupt crypto-lender Voyager Digital Ltd., but neither bid has been accepted yet, people familiar with the matter said.

The current bid from Binance is about $50 million, slightly higher than the competing bid from FTX, according to the people. FTX and Binance have emerged among the few winners in the crypto meltdown, both increasing their share of the trading market. FTX, owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, has been aggressively acquiring distressed assets during the downturn.

Voyager, founded in 2019, ran a crypto lending platform that took in customer deposits, paid them interest and lent out the assets to other parties before filing for bankruptcy in July. At the stock’s peak in 2021, the company’s market capitalization was $3.9 billion.

Alex Jones’s Infowars faces financial review after judge finds professional conflicts. A Texas bankruptcy judge ordered an independent review of Infowars’ financial affairs and refused to let the company hire chapter 11 advisers picked by its founder Alex Jones after determining they failed to disclose a professional conflict.

Judge Christopher Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston said he was concerned that a bankruptcy lawyer and restructuring officer hired by Infowars parent company Free Speech Systems LLC could act as impartial advisers looking out for the broadcasting site and its creditors.

The judge’s bench ruling on Tuesday sets back Mr. Jones’ attempt to use Infowars’ chapter 11 filing to withstand lawsuits alleging he defamed the families of Sandy Hook victims by falsely claiming the mass shooting was a hoax.

An independent lawyer already assigned to the FSS bankruptcy case will be empowered to review Infowars’ affairs and certain transactions, Judge Lopez said Tuesday after a hearing on the company’s request to retain lawyer Kyung Shik Lee as co-bankruptcy counsel and chief restructuring officer W. Marc Schwartz.

The Justice Department’s bankruptcy watchdog opposed the retention because Messrs. Lee and Schwartz failed to disclose that they had represented FFS before it filed chapter 11 while simultaneously advising other Infowars affiliates during an earlier, failed bankruptcy case.

Investment bank PJT denied $12 million Latam fee. A bankruptcy judge has rejected an additional $12 million fee payment to investment banker PJT Partners LP for its work advising Latam Airlines Group SA through a chapter 11 case that went on longer than expected.

Judge James Garrity of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York denied the Chilean airline’s request to raise the existing $25 million cap on PJT’s fees to $37 million. The judge sided with the Justice Department’s bankruptcy division, which objected to the proposed amendment to the terms of PJT’s retention agreement.

Professionals subject to a fee cap in chapter 11 “must live with the possibility that the value of its services exceeds the cap,” Saturday’s decision said. The bankruptcy code allows for exceptions in cases of unforeseeable circumstances, which Latam didn’t demonstrate, Judge Garrity said.

Alleged instances of wrongful arrest have been a continuing issue for Hertz, according to plaintiffs' lawyers, with at least 300 since 2015. The majority of legal claims related to false arrests were funneled into bankruptcy proceedings after the company entered chapter 11 proceedings in 2020. The latest lawsuit appears to be the first stemming from police stops that occurred since the company emerged from bankruptcy.

• Hertz to buy up to 175,000 EVs from GM. The companies said that Hertz would buy electric vehicles from across General Motors' four main brands in North America—Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac. Car-rental companies have been ordering electric cars to differentiate their fleets and add to their premium offerings.

Legal challenges to student loan forgiveness loom before midterms. Republican attorneys general, conservative groups and federal lawmakers are laying the groundwork to challenge President Biden’s executive action to cancel up to $20,000 of debt for most of the 40 million federal student loan borrowers.

Would-be plaintiffs can’t take action until the administration makes a formal move toward cancellation, such as releasing an application for loan forgiveness or wiping out the balances of a first batch of borrowers. Republican legal challenges are expected to start then, and legal experts say it is possible that the administration’s plan could be frozen by a federal judge within days.

• How Fed rate increases hit Americans’ monthly budgets. The Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates another 0.75 percentage point on Wednesday in its continuing effort to stamp out stubbornly high inflation. Americans are only beginning to feel the full impact of these moves.

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