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ION Worldwide Inc., a maker of wearable digital recorders that competes with industry leader GoPro Inc., has filed for bankruptcy after seeing its revenue drop significantly last year, the Wall Street Journal reported today. The New Jersey company has already reached a restructuring support agreement with one of its lenders, which would cut more than $15 million in debt from its balance sheet and allow iON to stay in business. ION Chief Financial Officer Chris Oatway said in court papers filed last week that the cash-starved company has been mired with problems, including disputes with one of its licensed brands and an intellectual-property lawsuit with GoPro. ION makes a line of wearable cameras in a variety of sizes, home-security products and dash cams, among other products, under the iON and Contour brands. ION saw its revenue drop to $12.4 million in 2015 from more than $25 million in 2014, Oatway said in court papers. The company sought to cut costs, and it laid off employees, but that wasn’t enough to stave off bankruptcy.

A group representing holders of Oi SA's bonds not guaranteed by unit Telemar Norte Leste SA is growing, underscoring the challenges facing Brazil's largest fixed-line phone carrier as it enters bankruptcy protection proceedings, Reuters reported yesterday. New York-based investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc and Metrica Investments LLC have stepped up talks with owners of $6.4 billion worth of euro- and U.S. dollar-denominated Oi bonds in the wake of the largest bankruptcy protection filing in Brazilian history. The Houlihan-Metrica group is one of the few gearing up for tough bankruptcy talks with Oi, which succumbed to a heavy debt burden and mounting competition after years of shareholder disputes. At 65.4 billion reais ($19.4 billion), Oi's petition is fraught with challenges due to a complex capital structure and wide creditor base, analysts said.

Brazil's Oi SA, a telecommunications company that recently filed the largest bankruptcy in the country's history, is seeking court protection in the U.S. to shield its assets from an affiliate of hedge fund Aurelius Capital Management LP, one of its holdout bondholders, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Oi and several affiliates sought chapter 15 protection on Tuesday with a debt load of $19 billion. A day earlier, the troubled telecom firm filed for the equivalent of chapter 11 in Brazil after an out-of-court restructuring proposal collapsed. If a judge approves Oi's chapter 15 request, the company would receive the benefits of U.S. bankruptcy law, which halt lawsuits and block creditors from seizing assets while it focuses on restructuring at home. Oi has dollar-denominated bonds and says many of its contracts and licenses, including those concerning undersea cables and satellite services, are governed by U.S. law.

Oi SA filed for bankruptcy protection on 65 billion reais ($19 billion) in debt — a Brazilian record — after failing to reach an agreement with creditors, the last straw following a series of mergers and leadership changes that failed to help the phone company get on solid financial footing, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Brazil’s fourth-largest wireless company sought protection from creditors so it could keep serving customers, the company said in a filing yesterday. Talks with creditors had stalled last week after some board members disagreed with a plan by bondholders to swap debt for equity, giving them 95 percent of the company and leaving current shareholders with a 5 percent stake.

The figure of $2.4 trillion is the amount that people around the world claim they lost when Mt. Gox, the Tokyo-based virtual currency exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy in 2014, after huge, unexplained losses of the volatile digital currency Bitcoin, the New York Times reported today. As with most of the people who lost money with Bernard L. Madoff, the investment manager who was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme, most of those who put their Bitcoin in Mt. Gox will be disappointed: The Japanese trustee overseeing the case said yesterday that only $91 million in assets has been tracked down to distribute to claimants — a small portion of the more than $500 million in assets that Mt. Gox claimed it had in the weeks before it went bankrupt in February 2014, and a tiny portion of the amount that claimants have requested. Bitcoin experts and law enforcement officials have spent over two years trying to figure out how hundreds of thousands of Bitcoins disappeared from the Mt. Gox exchange. There have been lots of conspiracy theories but few solid answers. The amount that claimants have requested from the Mt. Gox bankruptcy estate is extremely high, given that all the Bitcoins in the world today are worth about $7 billion, or 0.3 percent of the $2.4 trillion being claimed.

Jumio Inc., an identity verification company, won court approval to sell its assets to an affiliate of Centana Growth Partners Friday, settling a court-supervised sale process rife with controversy, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. A bankruptcy judge approved the deal following an auction on Thursday in which the New York-based private-equity firm won the right to buy Jumio’s business. Jumio chose Centana’s $850,000 offer over a much larger offer from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, which the company’s shareholders vehemently opposed. The sale is scheduled to close today. Jumio’s software helps companies quickly verify passports and driver's licenses via mobile apps and the web, and its customers include Airbnb Inc. and United Airlines Inc. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company says that its products can speed up checkout time, cut down on users’ data-entry errors, increase transaction completion rates and reduce fraud. The Centana sale included Jumio’s name, and the company will continue operating under the Jumio brand, according to a source familiar with the deal. The sale process was delayed last week after the company failed to attract any formal offers to compete with Mr. Saverin by a court-ordered deadline. But by Thursday, Jumio’s lawyer said two other bidders had come forward with serious offers. A 12-hour auction ultimately produced Centana’s winning bid, which drew no opposition at Friday’s hearing.

A Canadian court yesterday closed the door on legal challenges to a ruling that divvied up the $7.3 billion raised from the liquidation of Nortel Networks, a former Canada-based telecoms equipment maker that went bankrupt in 2009, Reuters reported. The decision barred U.S. parties from appealing a May 2015 ruling by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which issued an opinion that was coordinated with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. The two courts have been working in tandem to oversee the Nortel bankruptcy, and last year's simultaneous decision ruled that every creditor would receive roughly 71 cents on the dollar. That formula was advocated by representatives of Nortel's British pensioners, but opposed by the Nortel businesses in the United States and Canada.