In Steven's comments instead of his own blog:

[After the deal,] Senior creditor gets the revenue stream from the existing licenses. Ledford et al break up the rest of ADV and let the shell die. Other creditors force the shell into bankruptcy. Senior creditor says "our debt is senior; the total value upon liquidation would have been less than our debt, so nobody else was ever getting paid anyway. We've been offered a settlement we're happy with." Bankruptcy court says "well, them's the breaks" to everyone else and approves the deal. Result: all the other creditors have been discharged, and Ledford now has a production unit [Sera], a sales/warehouse unit [S23], and a licensing unit with Clannad and a couple other new titles [AEsir], all free of debt or obligation.

Why cannot they write a press release that exaplains things so clearly?

UPDATE: More comments at Omo's post.

By DiGiKerot:

ADV had stopped using the ADV name for the release of new shows already (don’t know about the re-releases), instead releasing everything under the Sentai Filmworks brand, typically without a trace of the ADV logo. Methinks they’ve pretty clearly known that they were going to be doing this for a while.

I noticed that too, but wasn't sure.

By Avatar:

The real issue is pretending that [the shuffling of shell companies] matters. Come on, anything good about ADV has been gone for some time now. The fact that there’s still a zombie shuffling around doesn’t mean anything, without the people who actually did the work.

Indeed. I have my Azumanga, Dai-Guard, RahXephon. There was nothing like them from ADV in a long time.