Eike Batista’s shipbuilding company OSX has agreed to file for bankruptcy protection only a week after the collapse of his oil company, marking a new low for the Brazilian tycoon who was once the world’s seventh-richest man. The Rio de Janeiro-based company said late on Friday that its board had approved the decision to file for judicial recovery, as the process is called in Brazil, for its central shipping and service units. The company said it would also replace its chief executive. However, the statement made no mention of OSX’s leasing unit, raising questions of whether the bankruptcy filing would exclude the unit through which it owns three floating oil platforms – the firm’s major assets. OSX’s announcement is another blow for Mr Batista, who lost his status as a billionaire this year and had long been championed in Brazil as one of the country’s most successful entrepreneurs. The move was widely expected after Mr Batista’s oil start-up OGX, OSX’s biggest client, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday last week, triggering the largest corporate default in Latin America. OSX was founded in 2009 to provide equipment for OGX, the flagship of Mr Batista’s oil and mining empire. In 2010 the shipbuilder raised R$2.82bn in an initial public offering, wooing investors with the promise of $30bn in orders from its sister company over the next decade. But OSX has struggled to remain profitable since OGX’s much-hyped wells proved to be failures. OSX shares have dropped about 96 per cent this year, from around R$10 to less than 50 centavos this week. Unlike OGX, OSX reached an agreement with some of its largest creditors before beginning bankruptcy proceedings, pinning down vital funds as it enters the court-led restructuring process. On Wednesday OSX announced it had struck a deal to roll over a loan of R$461m ($202m) for a year with Brazil’s state-run bank, Caixa Econômica Federal, and Santander. However, a filing from OSX could complicate OGX’s bankruptcy proceedings given that OSX is the biggest creditor to OGX. A restructuring document from Blackstone, an adviser to OGX, estimated that OSX was owed $900m but that the full amount being claimed by the services company was $2.6bn. Depending on whether OSX is able to press its full claim, OGX’s debt could grow to as much as $6.68bn from the $5.1bn estimated by Blackstone. Questions over a transfer of $449m from OGX to OSX earlier this year – a key reason behind OSX’s relatively stronger financial position – are likely to dominate talks with creditors. OGX said late on Thursday that it planned to change its name to Oleo e Gas Brasil after the bankruptcy, removing Mr Batista’s trademark ‘X’ which stood for the multiplication of wealth. Local media have reported that another restructuring option under consideration by Mr Batista is a merger between OGX and OSX. Under Brazil’s bankruptcy law, the company’s controlling shareholder leads the restructuring process rather than the creditors, a key and controversial difference to US Chapter 11 proceedings.