Vitro Seeks as Much as $1.6 Billion in Damages From Funds

Vitro SAB, Mexico’s largest glassmaker, filed a lawsuit seeking damages of as much as $1.6 billion from bondholders including U.S. hedge funds that shunned the company’s restructuring plan and tried to force it into involuntary bankruptcy in Mexico.

Under the company’s restructuring, approved by a Mexican court in February and subsequently rejected by U.S. courts, a trust holds newly issued bonds and payments for bondholders not accepting the plan. Vitro, which defaulted on $1.2 billion in bonds in 2009, will seek to collect damages from the trust related to efforts by dissident bondholders to put the company and 17 units into involuntary bankruptcy in Mexico, the company said in a filing yesterday to the Mexican stock exchange.