Vitro SAB, Mexico's largest glassmaker, filed a lawsuit seeking damages of as much as $1.6 billion from bondholders including U.S. hedge funds that shunned the company's restructuring plan and tried to force it into involuntary bankruptcy in Mexico, Bloomberg reported today. Under the company's restructuring, approved by a Mexican court in February and subsequently rejected by U.S. courts, a trust holds newly issued bonds and payments for bondholders not accepting the plan. Vitro will seek to collect damages from the trust related to efforts by dissident bondholders to put the company and 17 units into involuntary bankruptcy in Mexico, the company said in a filing yesterday to the Mexican stock exchange. The glassmaker also said the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans lifted temporary restraining orders that suspended bondholders' efforts to collect on judgments against Vitro and its units in the U.S. A three-judge panel of the appeals court last month affirmed a June ruling by a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Dallas who refused to enforce Vitro's restructuring plan.
