South Korea’s STX Offshore & Shipbuilding Co. filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas in a bid to stop creditors from trying to seize its assets in the U.S. as the troubled shipyard looks to sell its business overseas, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Bankruptcy Judge Jeff Bohm granted STX a temporary restraining order to block creditors from seizing U.S. assets at a hearing yesterday, one day after Yoon Keun Jang, the administrator overseeing STX Offshore’s Korean bankruptcy case, placed the company into chapter 15. Jang said that some creditors who hired STX to build vessels are trying to circumvent the Korean proceeding by seizing STX’s assets in the U.S. The shipbuilder would “suffer irreparable harm,” he said in court papers, absent a court order barring the asset seizures.
