Eike Batista's MMX mining firm sells Chilean unit

(MENAFN- AFP) Embattled Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista's MMX iron ore mining firm announced Friday that it was selling all shares in its Chilean unit to a Chilean company.

MMX, an arm of Batista's heavily-indebted EBX empire, said in a statement sent to Brazilian regulators that the sale to Inversiones Cooper Mining was in line with its "strategy to optimize its assets portfolio and streamline its company structures."

The value of the transaction was not disclosed but under the deal, MMX is guaranteed the payment of royalties equivalent to $0.80 real per ton of iron ore sold, up to a maximum total value of $40 million.

The sale is part of Batista'a efforts to sell assets to repay his empire's estimated $5.4 billion debt pile.

On Wednesday, his OGX oil unit filed for bankruptcy protection after debt-restructuring talks with its international creditors failed.

OGX's troubles began in the middle of last year when it announced that its oil production would be a quarter of what it had promised.

A year later it suspended development at three offshore oil fields not deemed commercially viable and said it may shut down its Tubarao Azul deep-water oil field off the Brazilian coast.

OGX has been the worst-hit in the Batista group, forcing him to seek new investment to keep its oil projects afloat.

Meanwhile Batista's OSX oil services and shipbuilding unit said late Thursday it too was mulling resorting to bankruptcy protection.

"The company could exercise its legal right to bankruptcy protection should this prove the most adequate measure to preserve the continuity of its business and the interests of its shareholders," said a text signed by Luiz Guilherme Esteves Marques, OSX's financial director.

Batista's market woes have cut an estimated $30 billion of value from his empire, and the man who until earlier this year was purportedly the world's seventh richest man is now worth an estimated $900 million.