faust357, I brought up Chemtura in my post to uhlmant to hightlight two chemical companies as it moves through the advanced stages of bankruptcy reorganization.
Your reference to environmental liabilities charged against both Tronox and Chemtura are similar in that they are many claims and potentially involve hundreds of millions or in the billions of dollars. These liabilities are big enough that they can literally break both companies if not addressed properly. The big difference between two companies as far as environmental liabilities are concerned is that Tronox has a compelling fraudulent toxic liability transfer case in which US Government is also adjoining party against its former parent Kerr McGee-Anadarko Petroleum, a $30bil market cap NYSE traded oil concern. On the other hand, Chemtura seems to be on the hook for all their claims which creditors of Chemtura is asserting as it opposes Equity Committee appointment.
Tronox management and US Bankruptcy Trustee saw the lawsuit against KM-APC as big asset that can potentially address hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental claims and therefore, provide significant value to its stakeholders. Kerr McGee fraudulently transferred according to Tronox suit all its toxic environmental liablities onto Tronox before it was spun off and subsequently merged with Anadarko Petroleum. Those claims brought Tronox to its knees and into bankrupcy court to address those liabilities and with that lawsuit in process of reallocating back to KM-APC. IMO, that is the reason why US Bankruptcy Trustee appointed Equity Committee to protect shareholders of Tronox.
You and I know Tronox without the environmental liabilites are worth a billion or more and even taking account of current DIP loan and outstanding bond obligation Tronox estate could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As much as Tronox creditors also discredit equity holders here we have Equity Committee in every step asserting our(shareholder) claim.