3. Off the auction block
A pair of bankruptcy auctions came to a close Thursday, with fallen retailer Bed Bath & Beyond and embattled media company Vice each naming winning bidders. Bed Bath’s intellectual property and digital assets will be sold to Overstock.com for $21.5 million, while Vice will be sold to Fortress Investment Group for $350 million, with plans to emerge from bankruptcy. Despite the auction, Bed Bath’s affairs aren’t completely sorted out yet. The company opted to run a separate sale process for its Buy Buy Baby business, which has long been its most promising banner.
4. SCOTUS rulings due
The Supreme Court is expected to release decisions around 10 a.m. ET Friday, with at least one major ruling still looming. The justices are due to rule in the coming days on challenges to the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan that would cancel debt of up to $20,000 for many Americans. Borrowers have been left in limbo for much of the past several months while the administration defended its plan in court and kept payments paused. There’s no way to know if the decisions that come out Friday will include the student loan case, and the court has already scheduled another release date for Tuesday. It also still has yet to rule on affirmative action cases at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
5. Tragic ends
All five passengers on a deep sea submersible exploring the Titanic wreckage are believed be dead after a dayslong search and what authorities are now calling a “catastrophic implosion.” Debris found Thursday on the ocean floor, roughly 1,600 feet away from the wreck of the famed passenger ship, was determined to belong to the submersible, called the Titan. OceanGate Expeditions, the company that offered the rare trip miles below the surface, confirmed the loss of its CEO, Stockton Rush, along with Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet. The announcement caps a dramatic and closely watched rescue effort that involved experts and agencies from several countries racing to find the crew before an emergency supply of oxygen in the vessel would run out.
— CNBC’s Sara Salinas wrote this newsletter. Samantha Subin, Kate Rogers, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Lillian Rizzo and Alex Sherman contributed.
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