It has been nearly five years since the Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Bernard L. Madoff came to light, and litigation surrounding the case grinds on.

The trustee seeking to recover funds for defrauded investors, Irving H. Picard, asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision barring him from pursuing banks for their role in helping perpetuate the fraud.

Meanwhile, the prosecution of five former employees of Mr. Madoff’s firm began last week. The criminal trial is likely to expose more tidbits about the operation of the long-running fraud, including lurid details about sexual liaisons among staff members involving perhaps even Mr. Madoff himself. Yet, despite the titillating aspects of the case, it is really more of a footnote to his scheme.

The more important case concerns Mr. Picard’s efforts to recover funds from a number of banks, including JPMorgan Chase, UBS, HSBC and UniCredit. He accused them of aiding in the Madoff scheme by ignoring warning signs about the fraud that allowed it to grow. As time went on, the scheme cost investors about $17 billion, and wiped out billions more, as they were led to believe the money was safely in their accounts.

The trustee’s claim against JPMorgan alone seeks nearly $19 billion, so recovering even a portion of that amount could add significantly to the $9 billion Mr. Picard has already gathered to compensate investors.

As is frequently the case, the issue is not about the banks’ role in the fraud – at least not yet. Rather, it focuses on whether certain arcane legal doctrines will permit the lawsuits to move forward. The banks have been successful in obtaining dismissals of the complaints on the ground that Mr. Picard does not have the authority to pursue claims on behalf of the defrauded investors…..

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Energy Future Holdings Corp., the Texas power generator taken private in the biggest leveraged buyout ever, is close to obtaining a loan of more than $3 billion ahead of a bankruptcy filing that may come this month, said four people with knowledge of the matter.

Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are the key lenders vying to provide parts of the debtor-in-possession financing, and first-lien creditors to Energy Future’s Texas Competitive subsidiary have been invited to participate, said the people, who asked not to be named because the process is private. The final terms and lenders may be decided next week, according to two of the people.

The size of the loan for the former TXU Corp., which has fluctuated over the past few weeks, is now likely to be about $3.5 billion, said two of the people. Debtor-in-possession financing is funding arranged by a company going through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, which typically has priority over existing debt, equity and other claims. Such a large DIP may help reassure vendors, customers and regulators the company can meet its obligations….

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Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., the hotel operator owned by Blackstone Group LP (BX), filed to raise $1.25 billion in a U.S. initial public offering as lodging shares trade at close to their highest level in six years.

The world’s largest hotel chain plans to use proceeds from the offering to pay down debt, according to a regulatory filing today. New York-based Blackstone, the world’s largest manager of alternative assets, will own a majority of the voting power in Hilton following the IPO, the filing shows.

At $1.25 billion, the IPO would be the largest for a lodging company and would move Blackstone closer to realizing gains from its biggest single investment, with more than $6 billion of equity invested from its real estate and other funds. The offering coincides with increases in industry revenue and income that have spurred stock gains for hoteliers such as Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. (HOT) and Marriott International Inc. Both are trading close to their highest levels since 2007.

“For Blackstone, it doesn’t make sense to keep something this valuable on the books,” said Jeffrey Sica, who oversees about $1 billion as chief investment officer of Morristown, New Jersey-based Sica Wealth Management LLC. “Hilton’s business has been doing well, so it makes very good sense for them to do it now.”

The McLean, Virginia-based hotel operator didn’t say how many shares it will offer or at what price. The offering amount is a placeholder used to calculate fees and may change. Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley will arrange Hilton’s IPO, the filing shows…

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For companies looking to raise money through the debt markets, and the bankers egging them on, it seems no sum is too large.

Verizon Communications shattered records and shook up the bond world on Wednesday when it sold $49 billion of investment-grade corporate debt at one time.

It was the largest deal of its kind, exceeding Apple’s $17 billion bond sale in April and illustrating the degree to which low interest rates are enabling corporations to borrow money inexpensively.

Verizon undertook the huge sale of corporate debt as it moves to finance its $130 billion deal to buy out Vodafone’s 45 percent stake in their Verizon Wireless joint venture.

The ease with which Verizon raised so much money caught even longtime market participants by surprise and fed speculation that more companies might tap the debt markets before interest rates begin to rise, as is expected.

“We’re starting to see the animal spirits pick up again,” said Kathy Jones, a fixed-income strategist at Charles Schwab. “Usually, once it gets going, it doesn’t let up.”

One banker involved in the offering said he was counseling corporate clients that now was an ideal time to raise more money for acquisitions.

“From an M.& A. perspective, nothing is out of reach,” he said. He spoke anonymously because he did not want to damage his relationship with his clients. Verizon’s buyout of the Vodafone stake in the wireless business — the third-largest corporate acquisition after Vodafone’s $203 billion takeover of the German cellphone operator Mannesmann in 2000, and the $182 billion merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2001 — was in the works for years, but it was finally struck last week, in part because Verizon wanted to take advantage of low interest rates while they lasted….

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Hilton Worldwide Holdings, the hotel company owned by the Blackstone Group, filed for an initial public offering on Thursday, seeking to raise at least $1.25 billion in what will be one of the most closely watched I.P.O.’s of the year.

Though details of the offering were not yet available, Hilton could be valued at about $30 billion once it goes public, capping a remarkable turnaround for what was once considered one of the worst deals of last decade’s private equity boom.

Blackstone took Hilton private in 2007, paying $26 billion for the company, which is based in McLean, Va. The deal was among those that came to symbolize the outsize ambitions of buyout shops in the years before the financial crisis as firms including Blackstone went after ever-larger targets.

Hilton did not disclose the precise sum it was looking to raise or how it intended to price shares. But Blackstone does not intend to issue so many shares that it loses control of Hilton. Instead, the private equity firm will continue to own a majority of the voting shares, allowing it to control the makeup of the board.

With comparable hotel chains like Starwood and Marriott trading at about 12 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and Blackstone growing at a healthy clip, its valuation could be about $30 billion by the time shares start trading, which is likely to be sometime early next year….

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The bond market is helping to make Sprint Corp. (S)’s promises to its bank lenders irrelevant.

The third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, backed by new majority owner Softbank Corp. (9984), said in a regulatory filing yesterday its $6.5 billion bond sale on Sept. 4 was enough to violate the terms of its loans “by a significant level” at the end of the month. While Sprint is in talks with lenders to amend the leverage covenant, the company also said it has the money to pay off its loans and cancel $4.5 billion of credit facilities if it fails to reach an agreement.

Sprint’s willingness to sacrifice its borrowing capacity including a $3 billion unsecured revolving credit line arranged by Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. underscores the security provided by Softbank, a company with a $78 billion market value, three times the size of the U.S. unit. That enabled Sprint to complete the biggest junk-bond offering since 2008 at lower relative yields than it paid a year ago and also increases the chance it will get the covenant amendment, according to KDP Investment Advisors Inc….

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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s $7.2 billion takeover of Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)’s handset business cost shareholders more than twice that as it dashed hopes for a fresh start under Steve Ballmer’s successor.

The world’s largest software company lost $18 billion in market value since the purchase of Nokia’s mobile-phone assets was disclosed, erasing all of the gains that followed the announcement last month that Ballmer is retiring, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The agreement cements the departing chief executive officer’s shift toward the more volatile consumer-device business and leaves little room for his successor to take a different tack, Atlantic Equities LLP said.

Microsoft is chasing growth in a market already dominated by Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG) with devices that generate lower returns than the company’s business-software division. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is returning to Microsoft as part of the asset sale, making him Ballmer’s most likely successor and signaling that the company is in smartphones for the long haul, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. said, even as some shareholders say that strategy is misplaced…..

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In the world of sovereign debt defaults, it is hard to imagine a less sympathetic debtor than Argentina. It has defaulted again and again for nearly two centuries, with few apologies. After the country’s most recent default, in 2001, it refused to negotiate for four years and then offered creditors a deal worth about 30 cents on the dollar — and vowed that those who refused would receive nothing.

After a second offer — on the same terms — in 2010, all but 7 percent of the bonds have been exchanged. But some of the remaining ones were owned by hedge funds that went to court. Last week they won a decision from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York that has caused considerable concern at institutions like the Treasury Department and the International Monetary Fund.

The decision essentially says that Argentina cannot pay any creditors if it does not pay all of them, and says banks — in the United States and perhaps around the world — could face contempt charges if they allow Argentina to make payments to only those lenders it wishes to pay.

“While we strongly disagree with Argentina’s actions in the international financial arena,” a senior Treasury official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said this week, “we have serious concerns that the Second Circuit’s decision will undermine the orderliness and predictability of sovereign debt restructuring and could roll back years of progress.”

The United States government, in a brief filed with the appeals court before it made its decision, urged that it not take the course it ultimately took, warning that the decision could damage the status of New York as a chief world financial center and cause “a detrimental effect on the systemic role of the U.S. dollar” by encouraging countries to denominate their debt in other currencies and put them outside the jurisdiction of United States courts…..

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