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KaloBios Pharmaceuticals said on Friday that it has emerged from bankruptcy, USA Today reported on Saturday. The former Martin Shkreli-led company also said that it had acquired the rights to develop benznidazole from Savant Neglected Diseases for $3 million. Benznidazole is a drug that helps treat Chagas disease, an infectious disease that affects 6 million to 7 million people worldwide. It is mainly found in Latin America. KaloBios filed for bankruptcy last December shortly after Shkreli was fired as its CEO after being arrested for alleged fraud charges that were unrelated to his brief time at KaloBios. He has denied the allegations.

China Fishery Group Ltd. sought U.S. bankruptcy protection four months after defaulting on $300 million of bonds amid investigations by market regulators in Singapore and Hong Kong, Bloomberg News reported today. The Hong Kong-based company yesterday filed its chapter 11 petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, listing as much as $50 million of liabilities and more than $500 million of assets, according to court documents. Its Singapore-listed parent company Pacific Andes Resources Development Ltd. filed a separate chapter 15 petition for companies reorganizing outside the U.S. The filings allow the group to fend off creditors and bondholders from seizing its assets, primarily the fishery business in Peru it acquired from Oslo-based Copeinca ASA in 2013. China Fishery said that efforts this year to sell the Peru fishery assets were not successful amid enforcement threats from some creditors. It received two undisclosed proposals in December that valued the business at $1.7 billion. The companies in the group “have been facing severe financial stress and encountered extreme challenges in their efforts to resuscitate and revive the business” after going in and out of provisional liquidation, it said in the court petition.

Financial peril for dry bulk shipping companies is expected to continue throughout the year, a new study finds, as weak demand from China shows no signs of abating, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Industry revenue dropped 18 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to a new analysis of 17 dry bulk companies by consulting firm AlixPartners LLP. Ebitda, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, plunged 168 percent to minus $115 million from $169 million in 2014. Nearly every company included in the analysis received a distressed Z-score, a metric developed by bankruptcy scholar Edward Altman, and the majority of companies are at risk of filing for bankruptcy, AlixPartners said. Broadly, the industry dynamics date back to before the 2008-to-2010 recession, when strong demand for shipping caused companies to expand their capacity. Then the recession drove down pricing, and a slow rebound ushered many companies into bankruptcy through 2013, when pricing seemed to stabilize. However, the slowdown in Chinese manufacturing once again tanked prices last year. The Baltic Dry Index, a global measure of shipping prices for commodities, reached the lowest point in its 31-year history in February 2016, at 290 points.

Relativity Media LLC is expected to miss a previously scheduled $30 million payment to its lenders yesterday, raising doubts about the company's ability to stay afloat just months after emerging from bankruptcy, Dow Jones Newswires reported today. Relativity's plan to exit chapter 11 called for founder and chief executive Ryan Kavanaugh to have raised $50 million in new equity by yesterday, enough to pay off at least $30 million Relativity owes to a group of hedge funds that bought the Hollywood studio's more-lucrative TV unit in October. However, Kavanaugh has yet to raise the new funding and has sought an extension of the $30 million payment. The funds will likely give Kavanaugh more time to come up with the cash, according to sources.

Triangle USA Petroleum Corp., an oil and gas explorer working one of the largest shale oil reservoirs in North America, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to restructure that will keep its parent company out of chapter 11, Bloomberg News reported today. Triangle USA is active in the North Dakota and Montana regions of the Williston Basin, where it uses horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The company and its affiliates fell victim to the price slump that began in 2014, and bankruptcy proceedings were started “with the objective of realigning their capital structure with new market realities,” Chief Restructuring Officer John Castellano said in papers in Delaware federal court. After several months of negotiations, the company reached an agreement with holders of 73 percent of its senior unsecured notes and plans to get out of bankruptcy by converting the debt into equity in a new, restructured business. Parent Triangle Petroleum Corp. and an oilfield services affiliate, RockPile Energy Services LLC, weren’t included in Wednesday’s chapter 11 filing. Read more. 

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A Brazilian court yesterday accepted Oi SA's bankruptcy protection petition, allowing the country's largest phone company to move ahead with plans to reorganize operations and restructure 65.4 billion reais ($20.2 billion) of debt, Reuters reported. The decision was made by judge Fernando Viana of the 7th Commercial Branch of Rio de Janeiro's Justice Tribunal who will supervise the reorganization on behalf of Oi and creditors, the court said in a statement. Viana said that he accepted the petition because of the company's importance to the Brazilian economy, to ensure an organized restructuring of Oi's debts and to protect its suppliers, 70 million clients, 140,000 employees and taxes Oi pays to the Brazilian government, the statement said.

AstroTurf LLC has filed for bankruptcy protection after a $30 million loss in a patent fight with France’s Tarkett, which makes the rival FieldTurf synthetic-grass product, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The bankruptcy filing is meant to preserve AstroTurf’s ability to challenge the judgment while allowing it to sell its business in a deal that promises a return to creditors. Private equity-owned Sportfield Deutschland Holding GmbH has offered $92.5 million. Court papers indicate AstroTurf will receive only about $16 million of the purchase price if the deal clears bankruptcy court. Other sellers, including AstroTurf owner Textile Management Associates Inc., would collect the rest of the money under the proposed transaction. Court papers say Textile Management controls AstroTurf’s intellectual property and the deal won’t work without it. Textile Management is also AstroTurf’s chief secured lender, owed nearly $38 million. The loan is connected to a promissory note signed in December 2015, less than three months after a jury found the company had infringed a patent controlled by Tarkett’s FieldTurf USA Inc. unit.