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The bankruptcy case of a Canonsburg, Pa.-based oilfield construction company that closed abruptly late last month will occur in Pittsburgh instead of Texas after the company opted not to contest the involuntary bankruptcy case filed in the Pittsburgh federal bankruptcy court last month instead of one it filed last week in Houston, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported. GW Ridge LLC was a natural gas pipeline project manager and oilfield services firm that stopped operations in late November. The company had at one time at least 200 employees and a headquarters on Technology Drive in Southpointe, and had done pipeline construction for several major companies. But it ran aground months after what GW Ridge in a filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas called "material misconduct" that was discovered earlier this year and led to a $2.1 million tax liability and an inability to continue. Several local creditors, owed $337,000 and represented by the Law Office of Robert O Lampl in Pittsburgh, on Nov. 22 filed an involuntary chapter 7 bankruptcy against GW Ridge LLC in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. That was followed a week later by the company on Dec. 1 filing bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas and subsidiaries Ridge Payroll and Ridge Holdings Dec. 2 in the same court. Ridge Payroll handled payroll for GW Ridge, according to filings. There had been a question about whether the Pittsburgh or Texas courts would handle the GW Ridge bankruptcies, but on Tuesday in Houston, GW Ridge filed a motion seeking a dismissal of the case in Texas in favor of proceeding with the bankruptcy filed by the creditors and the Lampl office in Pittsburgh.

Valley Hospice of Arizona, a Mesa-based end-of-life care facility, has voluntarily filed for bankruptcy protection with at least $2.49 million owed to scores of creditors, ABC15.com reported. Valley Hospice on Nov. 12 declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is the most common type of bankruptcy used to reorganize a failing business. This business is not connected to Hospice of the Valley, a larger chain of health care centers in the area. Documents on file with U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona show that the company owes money to 77 creditors, many of which are unsecured. Valley Hospice owes at least $2.4 million to these unsecured creditors, but it filed under subchapter V of chapter 11, meaning it has less than $7.5 million in total debts owed.

Riverbed Technology has filed for chapter 11 protection with a view to implementing a pre-packaged financial restructuring plan to eliminate debts of $1.1 billion following struggles caused by the pandemic, The Register reported. The SD-WAN and WAN optimization business first signaled an intent to enter into a restructuring support agreement last month, which it said is fully supported by all its voting lenders, as well as private equity majority owners, Thoma Bravo LLP and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP). In court papers filed with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Riverbed president and CEO Dan Smoot said the "best option" is to "right-size its capital structure and position itself for long-term success." "Like many similar businesses, Riverbed faced significant COVID-19 related headwinds in 2020, including global supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, which adversely affected Riverbed's financial performance," said Smoot in supporting document. "With factories shut down and stay-at-home orders instituted across the globe, Riverbed faced challenges maintaining its global supply chain as well as driving sales through a suddenly fully remote salesforce." The limitations caused by the pandemic and debt obligations — it was bought by Thoma Bravo and OTPP at the end of 2014 for around $3.6bn — "significantly constrained liquidity through 2020," the CEO added. The business, which employs 1,400 staff and sells to more than 30,000 customers, said the "sustained decrease in workforce participation and declined demand during the pandemic for Riverbed's products and services" kept the pressure on liquidity, leading to the exploration of efforts to reduce its debts to its owners.

Abarta Oil & Gas Co. LLC, a Pittsburgh-based oil and gas drilling company, filed for chapter 11 protection on Sunday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported. The company, also known as Abarta Energy and headquartered at 200 Alpha Drive in Pittsburgh, reported liabilities of $25.4 million and assets of $4.2 million. In court filings, Abarta Oil & Gas said that it wants to sell its remaining oil and gas assets and wind down its business, which stretches back to the late 1970s and included wells in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. It's asking the bankruptcy court’s approval for the sale of its interest in a 1,722-acre natural gas field and gathering pipeline in Bradford County. Its parent company is Abarta Inc., to which it owes $10 million. By far the largest creditor is Dominion Field Services, a pipeline company based in Pittsburgh whose parent company is energy giant Dominion. Abarta Oil & Gas owes $2.8 million as part of a settlement to Dominion made in 2016 when Abarta terminated a gas transmission agreement in Pennsylvania. It also owes $170,000 to another pipeline company, BHE Eastern Gas Transmission, from an agreement that wasn't picked up when Abarta Oil & Gas sold oil and gas assets in West Virginia. In a filing yesterday, Abarata Oil & Gas said that its trouble began in 2015 during an earlier period of natural gas commodity declines, which dragged on the company, as did what it termed in a filing as substantial debt.

GTT Communications, Inc., a global cloud networking provider to multinational clients, announced yesterday that the company and certain of its direct and indirect subsidiaries have commenced pre-packaged chapter 11 cases in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to effectuate a deleveraging of GTT’s capital structure, according to a press release. GTT’s foreign businesses and operations outside of the U.S. are not included in the filing and are unaffected by the chapter 11 cases. GTT on Sept. 1 entered into an RSA with key stakeholders, including holders of a majority of its secured and unsecured debt and I Squared Capital, to implement a comprehensive restructuring of the company’s balance sheet following the sale of its infrastructure division to I Squared Capital. The sale closed on September 16, 2021. Subsequent to executing the RSA and the closing of the sale, GTT solicited acceptances of its pre-packaged plan, which received support from its debtholders. Lenders holding over 88% of the aggregate outstanding principal amount of GTT’s secured loans and holders of over 88% of the aggregate outstanding principal amount of GTT’s 7.875% Senior Notes due 2024, including all lenders and noteholders that voted on the pre-packaged plan, voted to accept. The company is seeking to have the pre-packaged plan confirmed in mid-December.

Banks are on pace this year to merge at a level not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported. It is a sharp turnaround from last year, when the economy spiraled and many regional and community banks put merger plans on the shelf. Bank executives are now feeling more certain about what the future holds, but some are finding it hard to make it on their own. Though the economy has in many ways recovered from 2020, loan demand is still low and profits from lending are slim. Banks have announced more than $54 billion in deals through late September, according to Dealogic. That puts industry mergers and acquisitions on pace for their biggest year since 2008, when some big banks had to sell themselves to stave off collapse. At this time last year, banks had announced just $17 billion in mergers. Banks typically spend weeks or months turning a potential target’s loan book upside down, searching for risky loans or other red flags, before agreeing to acquire it. But the COVID-19 pandemic muddied that process. For months, lenders struggled to assess the creditworthiness of their own customers, much less those of their competitors.

A Cayman Island mutual fund whose manager was charged in a $100 million bait-and-switch scheme filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. to protect its assets from lawsuits by disgruntled investors, Bloomberg News reported. Representatives of the so-called Income Collecting 1-3 Months T-Bills Mutual Fund asked a federal bankruptcy judge in New York on Friday to recognize their efforts to liquidate the company, which they said would include an attempt to pay back investors. Recognition of the foreign liquidation would put a hold on any lawsuits against the fund. The fund’s manager, Ofer Abarbanel, was arrested June 24 in Los Angeles and charged with securities and wire fraud. U.S. prosecutors said the California man told an investor group that its money would be primarily placed in short-term U.S. Treasury securities but instead put it in funds he controlled or was closely associated with. Two days before Abarbanel’s arrest, the fund was placed in liquidation in the Cayman Islands on the vote of its sole shareholder, NY Alaska ETF Management LP, according to court records. The fund’s representatives said in court papers that the fund has “a particular need” for recognition of its liquidation efforts, given the Securities and Exchange Commission’s findings of “potential significant fraud against the fund and its creditors.” According to the SEC, the fund “had $106 million in liabilities against possibly only approximately $88 million in assets,” the lawyers said. “Based upon these serious allegations of fraud, it is likely that other parties may assert litigation against the fund. A stay of any pending and potential future proceedings will be important to the (representatives’) investigation and efforts to collect assets and wind down the fund.”