Welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Thursday, November 20. In today's briefing, Santander’s total exposure to First Brands and companies tied to founder Patrick James has risen to roughly $300 million after James defaulted on a loan used to acquire Novares. Meanwhile, a bankruptcy judge has signed off on the scope of the examiner's investigation into the bankrupt auto-parts seller's factoring transactions and its use of the financing proceeds. 

Santander’s exposure to First Brands and other companies owned by founder Patrick James has grown to around $300 million after James defaulted on a loan he took out earlier this year to buy a French car parts group.

The loan was for around $230 million, according to people familiar with the deal. It adds to around $77 million in receivables financing owed to Santander, and a $55 million facility with First Brands units in Mexico and Brazil. A Santander spokesperson declined to comment.

In the months before it failed, founder Patrick James went shopping for businesses in Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. He bought plastics parts maker Novares with a bridge loan from Santander. First Brands was a guarantor on the loan, according to people familiar with the deals.

A bankruptcy judge has signed off on the scope of investigations of First Brands examiner, authorizing the appointee to investigate the following areas, maintaining the budget under $7 million.

• Examine First Brands’ prepetition third-party factoring transactions, including whether invoices were fraudulent, inaccurate or factored multiple times, and identify responsible parties.
• Review all transfers and transactions among the debtors, insiders and affiliates, their controlled entities, as well as unrelated third-party factors related to the factoring activity and use of proceeds.
• Assess accounting for proceeds of the factoring transactions and any third-party property the debtors received.
• Investigate First Brands off-balance-sheet financing transactions.

The third quarter seemed to mark a long-awaited turning point for U.S. private-equity dealmakers, with large transactions driving deal value to a nearly four-year high.

Dealmakers now expect deal numbers to gain momentum, according to a recent survey from financial advisory firm Deloitte. 

The survey of 1,500 private-equity and corporate executives found that both groups expect average deal numbers to grow in the year ahead, with 90% of private-equity executives predicting an increase in deal numbers over the coming months and 87% saying they expect deal value to grow. Among corporate executives surveyed, 80% said they expect to do more deals and 81% projected higher deal value, according to Deloitte.

The Labor Department said Wednesday it wouldn’t issue complete October jobs data because of the effects of the government shutdown.

The longest shutdown on record, which ended last week, stopped the government from gathering numbers needed to calculate the October unemployment rate and other labor-force data, the Labor Department said. That data “is not able to be retroactively collected,” it said.

Divisions over whether the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates next month deepened at officials’ October meeting, leaving a growing contingent—and potentially a narrow majority—of policymakers uncomfortable with a December rate reduction.

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