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Otelco Inc., a local exchange carrier based in Oneonta, Ala., filed for chapter 11 protection after losing a contract with Time Warner Cable Inc., which resulted in lower revenue, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Otelco listed assets of $168 million and debt of $310 million in the chapter 11 documents filed on Saturday. Otelco won support of creditors for a debt restructuring plan prior to the filing, the company said. Under the proposal, which must be approved by the bankruptcy court, Otelco will cut its long-term debt by half to $135 million from $271 million with secured creditors swapping current debt for new debt and shares in the company. Subordinated note holders will receive 92.5 percent of Class A shares in the company, Otelco said.

China-based solar panel maker Suntech Power Holdings, one of the world's largest solar panel manufacturers by capacity, declared bankruptcy, Reuters reported today. Creditor banks of Suntech, based in Wuxi in eastern China, have jointly filed an application to Wuxi Intermediate People's Court for bankruptcy reorganization of the firm. On Monday, Suntech said that it had defaulted on $541 million of its bonds due on Friday, triggering cross-defaults on loans from International Finance Corp. and Chinese lenders.

Suntech Power Holdings Co., the Chinese solar-panel maker that announced a forbearance agreement for $541 million in convertible debt due tomorrow, fell to a record low after Maxim Group LLP said the company is "likely" to default and enter bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Suntech tumbled 22 percent to 65 cents at the close in New York, the lowest since it began trading in December 2005. The bonds increased to 32 cents on the dollar. The company said in a statement on March 11 that about 60 percent of the bondholders had agreed to wait until May 15 before exercising their rights. A default would be the first for a bond issued by a company in mainland China. Suntech, the largest solar panel maker in 2011, has reported losses for the past two years and had about $2 billion of debt as of the end of August, according to a bondholder presentation in November filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bankrupt telecom equipment giant Nortel Networks’s former worldwide units are squaring off over its last remaining asset: $9 billion in cash, Reuters reported today. Two judges, one in Wilmington, Del., and one in Toronto, will jointly hear arguments today that will ultimately decide how, and when, to carve up that money. The outcome will determine how much will be available for tens of thousands of retirees, governments and hedge funds investors. “The issues which remain for decision are imposing,” U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Kevin Gross wrote on Feb. 14. The hearing was preceded in January by a third failed attempt to resolve the dispute through mediation. Warren Winkler, the chief justice of Ontario who oversaw those talks, said further attempts at mediation were no longer worthwhile. He had warned before the final mediation that failure to reach an agreement could tie up the disputes in the courts for years, burning through Nortel’s cash to pay the army of lawyers and advisers working on the case. The last time the two courts heard arguments on the issue, 78 lawyers appeared, according to the court transcript.

Memory chipmaker Micron said that the Tokyo district court issued an order approving its acquisition of Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida after creditors agreed to the plan, Reuters reported yesterday. Boise, Idaho-based Micron, which is losing money due to a crumbling PC industry, wants to create larger economies of scale and offered in July to buy Elpida for about $750 million in cash and to pay creditors a total of $1.75 billion in annual installments through 2019. Elpida's creditors voted to approve the deal on Tuesday, Micron said.

Hotel media provider LodgeNet Interactive Corp. received final bankruptcy court approval on its $30 million in bankruptcy financing, which includes $15 million in new funding that will keep the company running as it restructures, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. LodgeNet received interim approval of the loan, provided by a group of lenders, in late January. That approval gave it access to $5 million worth of new funding. This approval gives it access to the other $10 million. Included in the full amount of the loan, bringing the total to $30 million, is a $15 million rollup—a refinancing of pre-petition debt that gives it priority for repayment in bankruptcy.

Chipmaker Conexant Systems Inc. filed a pre-packaged chapter 11 nearly two years after it went private, hurt by declining revenue, increasing costs and higher debt load, Reuters reported today. Conexant Systems said that its sole secured lender, QP SFM Capital Holdings Ltd, an entity managed by Soros Fund Management LLC, will provide $15 Million in debtor-in-possession financing. As part of the restructuring, QP SFM Capital Holdings will exchange about $195 million of secured debt into equity in the reorganized company. The case is Conexant Systems Inc., Case No. 13-10367, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware.

Top wireless companies have accused struggling PowerWave Technologies Inc., which filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 28, of neglecting a monitoring system that watches over Washington, D.C.’s underground metro system, where PowerWave has been in charge of installing wireless infrastructure to expand Internet and cell phone coverage within the system, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T warned Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath that PowerWave's abandonment of the unfinished project has created “an unnecessary risk to public safety and welfare,” according to court papers. Not only has PowerWave stopped work and skipped subcontractor payments, the wireless carriers said, but the company told a subcontractor to ignore an intrusion alarm that went off at the Rosslyn, Va., Metro station. At a hearing on Friday, the carriers said that they have come up with a deal to pay the cost of running the monitoring and maintenance operation while the company and the carriers work toward a transition of the wireless expansion project out of PowerWave’s control. PowerWave is planning to auction its assets on April 8.

Gabriel Technologies Corp., a developer of global-positioning technology, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy last week after a billion dollar lawsuit the company filed in 2008 against Qualcomm Inc. backfired, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Having sued Qualcomm for patent infringement, Gabriel's doom was sealed in October when a federal district judge dismissed the last of the claims against San Diego-based Qualcomm. Earlier this month Qualcomm won a $12.4 million judgment against Gabriel for pursuit of what Qualcomm called an "objectively baseless" lawsuit brought in "bad faith." Gabriel claimed in the chapter 11 petition that assets and debt both exceed $10 million. The case is In re Gabriel Technologies Corp., 13-30340, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Northern District California (San Francisco).

Bankruptcy Judge Shelley C. Chapman said that LightSquared can keep control over its chapter 11 case until at least the summer after the wireless satellite company struck a deal with lenders to involve them more closely in the reorganization process, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. The extension gives LightSquared until May 31 to file reorganization plan and July 15 to solicit votes on such a plan without the threat of rival proposals. The deal, filed with the bankruptcy court on Wednesday, calls for LightSquared to only propose a reorganization plan that the lender group supports or that pays the group in full, in cash, along with other creditors. The lender group, owed about $1.1 billion, can file its own plan if LightSquared does not consult with it or if the company breaches the terms of an agreement that allows it to use cash secured by the lenders' loans.