Altice France filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in New York last week.

The company, owned by French billionaire Patrick Drahi, said it had filed for Chapter 15 as it seeks recognition of the carrier’s plans to accelerate safeguard proceedings.

Chapter 15 oversees cross-border insolvency proceedings in the US.

Altice’s application was filed on June 19.

The company has had notable financial struggles in the last 12 months or so, and has an estimated €19.2 billion ($22bn) worth of debt.

In February, Altice France, along with most of its creditors, reached an agreement to slash the company’s debt by €8.6bn ($9.98bn).

Altice referred to this agreement in its application. Bloomberg reported that more than €13.5bn ($15.5bn) of Altice France’s €19.2bn secured debt is governed by New York law and is traded or owned by US entities.

Altice France owns French telco SFR, the country’s second-biggest telco after Orange.

In an effort to ease the company’s climbing debt, Altice has pushed to shift a number of its assets in the past year.

In August, Drahi sold Altice’s 24.5 percent stake in UK telecoms giant BT to Bharti Airtel, in a deal estimated to be worth about $4bn at the time. Drahi only increased Altice UK’s stake in BT to 24.5 percent a year earlier, and even had plans to increase it to nearly 30 percent.

However, after years of acquisitions, the company has been looking to shift assets in order to pay down its mounting debt.

The company is open to selling its telecoms business and recently spun off its French data center assets, forming a new company with more than 250 facilities in France, which was then sold to Morgan Stanley. The Portuguese unit of Altice has also been separately looking to sell off its data center unit.

Altice’s Portuguese business has been grappling with a corruption probe, which led to the arrest of Drahi’s co-founder and former chief operating officer, Armando Pereira. Drahi has previously told investors that he felt “betrayed” by the scandal.