Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Monday, July 13. In today's briefing, Apollo Global Management-backed Brightspeed plans to seek fresh capital through an asset-backed financing this year as it continues to battle a massive debt load funding its nationwide fiber expansion, sources told WSJ Pro Bankruptcy.

Brightspeed’s yearslong nationwide fiber build-out created valuable assets but saddled the telecommunications company with roughly $11 billion of debt as it looks to secure fresh capital and sets itself up for a sale, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Apollo Global Management-backed broadband provider, which raised nearly $5.9 billion of capital over the last two years, is burning through cash because of the massive capital expenditures required to build out its fiber assets, some of the people said.

Brightspeed plans to raise capital again this year through an asset-backed financing facility secured by subscription cash flows from its new fiber network, according to the people.

In 2024, Mark Smucker, chief executive of food giant J.M. Smucker, took the stage at an industry conference and bit into a golden, creamy Twinkie. “Tastes like growth,” he said.

His company had just acquired Hostess, the maker of Twinkies, in a $5 billion deal and it seemed like a coup.

The Covid-19 pandemic had supercharged America’s snacking habit: Some 70% of consumers were eating at least two per day, Smucker said. Buying the owner of Ding Dongs and Donettes gave the jam-and-jelly maker entry into a $65 billion market for snacks. Smucker had beat out other suitors for Hostess, most notably General Mills.

Three years later, the deal isn’t tasting quite so sweet.

For decades, Volkswagen’s prowess in selling German-engineered cars around the world helped support a growing army of some of the auto industry’s best-paid workers back home.

Now, that once-unshakeable business model—and the vast workforce it sustained—is under threat like never before.

The world’s second-largest automaker last week said it would cut its lineup of cars by as much as a half and further reduce its production capacity as part of its second major overhaul in under two years.

“The cost reductions planned to date under the agreed programs are not sufficient in the current economic and geopolitical environment,” said Chief Financial Officer Arno Antlitz.

Wall Street is sending a message to tech companies engaged in a historic borrowing spree to fund investments in artificial-intelligence infrastructure: for pity’s sake, please slow down. 

Over the past several weeks, the investment-grade corporate bond market has struggled to absorb a combined $75 billion of bond issuance from Nvidia, SpaceX and Amazon.com. That marks a shift from earlier in the year, when investors were generally happy to hand money to so-called AI hyperscalers by any possible means.

While Nvidia and SpaceX were able to borrow at reasonably low interest rates, their newly issued bonds quickly slumped in the secondary market, disappointing investors who often like to flip such bonds. Amazon, meanwhile, had to pay unusually steep rates by its standards to complete its debt sale, reflecting investors’ newfound caution.

A bidding war could be about to take off for one of Europe’s biggest airlines.

Shares in easyJet jumped 13% to a four-year high Friday after the London-listed carrier said it had agreed to a potential $7.6 billion takeover by U.S. asset manager Apollo.

Apollo’s proposal for the budget carrier trumps an early provisional agreement with Castlelake, an American private equity and aircraft leasing group. Castlelake has made a number of approaches for easyJet in recent weeks, culminating in a roughly $7 billion agreement in principle on Sunday.

Before the developer of a Midtown Manhattan conversion project was thrust into the spotlight this week, MetroLoft was already battling problems at another high-profile conversion project downtown.

It was at a stately red brick building, known as 443 Greenwich, with oversized curved windows and a Tribeca address. MetroLoft transformed the 19th-century warehouse into luxury dwellings that attracted A-list celebrities, including actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Meg Ryan.

MetroLoft worked with the same key players on that project as on the Midtown Manhattan conversion of the former Pfizer headquarters that was at risk of partial collapse on Tuesday: Gace Consulting Engineers and an inspection firm, Domani Inspection Services.

But in recent years, the firm fell into financial trouble. In 2023, Gace filed for bankruptcy. Separately, it was named as a defendant in at least two construction lawsuits at that time, including one in which construction work damaged a neighboring property.

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