VICE Media LLC, which declared bankruptcy on Monday, owes $10 million to Wipro in India. Wipro is VICE media's biggest unsecured creditor, according to filings.
On May 15, Vice Media Group applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy relief in a New York bankruptcy court, listing $350 million in assets and $834 million in liabilities.
Vice's Chief Restructuring Officer, Frank Pometti, stated in a court document that while the firm relied on outside finance, including debt and equity, to support its expansion and pay for expenses, it also left the company "burdened by a highly leveraged and unusually complex capital structure."
Wipro won an arbitration earlier in March. The IT company received an award of $7.9 million, plus interest at a rate of 9%, making it a total of about $9.9 million.
Following this, Wipro served Vice with a restraining notice. Vice was unable to access its cash or sell its assets because of the restraining action. Pometti claims that this resulted in more defaults.
In order to suspend the account until the payments were made, Wipro approached Vice's principal bank, JPMorgan Chase (JPMC), on May 10. According to the complaint, this notification "sought to impose a stay on withdrawals from Vice Media's accounts at JPMC."
Pometti claimed that the account held more money than was necessary to meet the restraining order's stay criteria.
However, JP Morgan had no choice but to freeze Vice's accounts. All of this contributed to the media giant having to file for bankruptcy.