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API Americas Inc., a maker of fancy packaging for liquor, tobacco, candy and makeup, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Sunday, looking for a buyer or another way to pay off its debts, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. A sale is one possibility for the packaging maker, which has headquarters in Lawrence, Kan., and ties to an indirect parent that entered administration in the U.K. last week, API Group Ltd. Administration is a corporate restructuring process akin to chapter 11 in the U.S. The company’s bankruptcy followed years of quality problems, declining demand and deteriorating revenues for API Americas, which produces foils and laminates to decorate consumer packaging. A shift to more environmentally friendly products, and increased competition, fed the company’s multiyear decline, according to papers filed by Mitchell Gendel, API Americas’ chief restructuring officer. Assets are valued at about $37 million, and API Americas owes about $44 million to secured lenders, in addition to trade debt, according to papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del.

The number of corporate bankruptcies increased in 2019 for the first time in 11 years, affected by the consumption tax hike, labor shortages and a series of natural disasters, the Japan Times reported. Business failures with debts of at least ¥10 million rose 1.8 percent from the previous year to 8,383, the first increase since the 2008 global financial crisis, Tokyo Shoko Research said. Bankruptcies increased in the retail and transportation sectors that were hit hard by the Oct. 1 consumption tax hike from 8 percent to 10 percent, natural disasters and the labor crunch, the agency said. Total liabilities left by bankrupt companies dropped 4.2 percent from a year earlier to ¥1.42 trillion, the lowest level in 30 years, as a majority of bankruptcies involved debts of less than ¥100 million, it said.

Britain’s Parliament took an important step toward taking the country out of the European Union at the end of January, as lawmakers in the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to back the Brexit agreement Prime Minister Boris Johnson negotiated with the bloc last year, the Wall Street Journal reported. Lawmakers had backed the deal in December, so Thursday’s decisive vote was a foregone conclusion, given Mr. Johnson’s commanding majority in the Commons. The agreement passed with 330 voting in favor and 231 against. The legislation will now go to Parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, on Monday, where it is expected to be debated for around a week. There is no further practical hurdle to the agreement becoming law in the U.K., given that the House of Lords has limited power to change such legislation. With no amendments in the upper house, the bill would require only Queen Elizabeth II’s signature to become law. Then it needs backing in Brussels, including from the European Parliament, which is also expected to be a formality. That would pave the way for the U.K. to end its 46-year relationship with the EU on the evening of Jan. 31. With the terms of the divorce with the EU all but settled, attention has turned to the nature of the two sides’ future relations. After Jan. 31, the U.K. will keep its practical ties to the EU until at least the end of 2020, while it negotiates new deals to cover their future relationship.