%1

The creditors of debt-ridden oil services group CGG have accepted CGG’s chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, CGG said today, in what could form one of the biggest restructurings that France has seen in recent years, Reuters reported. CGG has debt in excess of $3 billion, and the restructuring calls for unsecured debt to be converted to equity, maturities on secured debt to be extended and $500 million in new money to be raised. CGG, in which the French state holds around 9 percent of the shares, filed for bankruptcy in France and the United States in June as part of a restructuring to ease its debt burden. The company, which specializes in geo-seismic surveys and is listed in Paris and New York, struggled to keep up with payments on its debt as the big oil groups that use its services proved reluctant to lift exploration spending despite rising oil prices. Read more.

Get a better understanding of what happens when an oil, gas or other natural resources company goes bankrupt. Order your copy of ABI's revised and expanded When Gushers Go Dry: The Essentials of Oil & Gas Bankruptcy, Second Edition. 

Just five months after filing for bankruptcy, the company that operates the largest chain of freestanding emergency rooms in the U.S. says it will soon return as a privately held company, the Dallas Morning News reported. A North Texas judge has confirmed Adeptus Health’s restructuring plan, and the company could emerge from chapter 11 in the coming days. Adeptus Health operated nearly 100 freestanding emergency rooms and five hospitals in a handful of states, including Texas, Arizona and Colorado, when it filed chapter 11 in April. Founded in 2012, the company grew quickly into an expansive enterprise with more than 3,200 employees and its number of shareholders reached to more than 140 affiliated entities. Yet the Adeptus entities struggled to generate the revenue to cover costs at their 24-hour emergency operations, and the expense of opening of new hospitals added even more debt. Read more. 

For more on hospital and health care insolvencies, be sure to pick up a copy of the ABI Health Care Insolvency Manual, Third Edition from the ABI Bookstore. 

New York City taxi mogul Evgeny Freidman is being sued for $12 million that he borrowed from dozens of his taxi companies that are now in bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. The trustee who filed the federal lawsuit is accusing Freidman of using “his position of ownership, domination and control of the [taxi companies] to strip and divert assets … for his personal benefit,” according to the complaint filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Brooklyn. The legal action was brought by a chapter 7 trustee Greg Messer, who took over more than three dozen of Freidman’s taxis last year amid a dispute over a $34 million bank loan. The lawsuit, if successful, would recover money to pay the loan and other debts owed by the taxi companies.

Belgian diamond wholesaler and distributor Exelco NV, a De Beers-listed customer, has sought chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers filed on Tuesday, the company listed assets of between $10 million and $50 million, and liabilities of between $50 million and $100 million, according to court papers. Judge Kevin Gross will be overseeing the case. A first-day hearing has yet to be set. The firm, based in Antwerp, is still listed as one of De Beers’s customers, according to the De Beers website. Exelco was once considered a diamond-trading-company sightholder, meaning it was on the authorized bulk purchaser list of rough diamonds. Court papers show that Exelco’s ownership is split between Lior Kunstler and Jean Paul Tolkowsky.

Optima Specialty Steel’s plan to have its largest creditor, DDJ Capital Management, plug a $200 million hole in its bankruptcy-exit strategy yesterday cleared an initial legal test, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Following a hearing at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Judge Kevin Carey approved an outline of a modified chapter 11 plan, which Optima scrambled to pull together after an earlier $200 million commitment from its owner never materialized. The new plan must still go through a formal voting process, required by bankruptcy law but effectively controlled by DDJ, a Waltham, Mass.-based investment firm. A hearing on final approval of the DDJ-backed plan is set for Oct. 16.

Toys “R” Us Inc. is close to getting a cheaper rate on an operating loan that could help with the retail chain’s efforts reorganize in bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. While the company has a total of $3.1 billion in bankruptcy financing, including a $1.85 billion asset-backed revolver, the improved rate comes on a $450 million term loan. Initial talk for the loan, which is syndicated and fully funded, was a price of Libor plus 750 basis points, or 7.5 percentage points; now a rate of Libor plus 675 basis points is being discussed. The terms will potentially save the company around $4.4 million in interest over the lifetime of the loan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The terms also improved on the original-issue discount, giving Toys "R" Us 99.5 percent of the loan’s funds, rather than 99 percent. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is the lead agent on the 16-month loan, and Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Barclays Plc are joint arrangers and book runners, according to court papers. Read more. 

What does the future hold for retail bankruptcies? Be sure to attend ABI’s Bankruptcy 2017: Views from the Bench on October 17. 

Gaming regulators in Louisiana and Missouri have granted the licenses and regulatory approvals necessary for the restructuring of Caesars Entertainment and Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported today. The approvals in those two states were the last major hurdles for Caesars to clear to exit chapter 11 protection. The company expects to be operating under the restructured corporate governance in early October. The company won its final approvals in Nevada in August. Caesars filed for chapter 11 protection in January 2015, and after two years of contentious negotiations among creditors, Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar of the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago approved the company’s bankruptcy plan in January 2017. Company shareholders overwhelmingly approved a merger of Caesars Entertainment in two separate votes in July.

Ocean Rig UDW Inc., the Nasdaq-listed international contractor of offshore deepwater drilling services, completed one of the largest cross-border restructurings in the Cayman Islands and emerged from bankruptcy last week, the Cayman Compass reported yesterday. The restructuring substantially deleveraged the group’s companies by exchanging $3.7 billion in debt for new equity, $288 million in cash and $450 million of secured debt. The restructuring reduced net debt by approximately $3.25 billion and involved the provision of a new $450 million credit facility. Creditors received ordinary shares, cash and new loan notes in consideration of the release of debt. In addition, potential claims against the group were transferred into a preserved claims trust to allow creditors to share on a ratable basis in any recoveries from such claims, noted law firm Appleby Cayman.

The thought of Toys ‘R’ Us closing stores due to its recent bankruptcy filing is too much for one nine-year-old to bear, according to court papers, Reuters reported. In a handwritten letter entered on Monday in the bankruptcy docket of the largest U.S. toy store chain, the child argued store closings “will be bad for kids” and would leave them “very unhappy.” The retailer’s stores are special for children, who “would rather be promised a trip to Toy ‘R’ Us than any other store,” the child said in the letter to Bankruptcy Judge Keith Phillips, who is overseeing the bankruptcy case. The letter identifies the child only as Andrew. The child’s last name was blacked out. Toys ‘R’ Us filed for chapter 11 protection earlier this month to restructure $5 billion of its long-term debt. It did not, however, file with plans for store closures as has been typical of many retailers that have sought to restructure or liquidate in court in recent years. Read more.

What does the future hold for retail bankruptcies? Be sure to attend ABI’s Bankruptcy 2017: Views from the Bench on October 17. 

The court-appointed trustee in charge of China Fishery Group Ltd. isn’t backing down in a bankruptcy battle with HSBC Ltd. , which he is investigating for aggressive collection tactics that allegedly had a “severely negative impact” on the fishing enterprise, the Wall Street Journal reported today. In court papers filed on Thursday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York, the trustee, William Brandt Jr., asked a bankruptcy judge to reaffirm his power to investigate HSBC. Brandt has been largely successful in the long-running row with HSBC, winning a court order in July from Judge James Garrity Jr. allowing him to investigate the bank for collection efforts that Mr. Brandt said may have stunted China Fishery’s operations. “Some creditors may have overstepped their bounds,” Brandt said last month. China Fishery filed for chapter 11 protection in June 2016. Brandt said that HSBC is now “trying to delay compliance” with the judge’s order, refusing to accept subpoenas for documents or to respond to other requests for information related to the probe. A hearing on the matter is set for Thursday.