Creditors to get Tronox under bankruptcy exit plan

Tronox Inc. would be taken over by noteholders and other unsecured creditors under the chemical maker's proposal for exiting bankruptcy.

General unsecured creditors owed $470.6 million would split all of the new stock Tronox will issue when it exits bankruptcy. Pollution claims of as much as $5.2 billion would be resolved by paying government agencies and other environmental creditors as much as $145 million in cash and giving them 88 percent of the proceeds from a lawsuit, new convertible, preferred stock and insurance proceeds.

Tronox makes chemicals for paints, coatings, plastics, paper, batteries, toothpaste, sunscreen and shampoo. The company has disputed its responsibility for many polluted sites, including more than 600 mining-related sites and 270 chemical labs.

Tronox was spun off from Kerr-McGee, which had operations in West Chicago, in March 2006.

It sued Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Kerr-McGee in May 2009, saying the companies' 2006 spinoff of Tronox left it with $550 million in environmental liabilities.

The bankruptcy case is Tronox Inc., 09-10156, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).