Risk API

Monitoring bankruptcy and financial distress

Item 1.03 is a company telling the market it has entered bankruptcy or receivership. It is unambiguous, it is rare, and it is the clearest signal the form produces.

The problem

A name on the watchlist files for Chapter 11 and the desk finds out from a rating action. The filing itself was public first, and it was already categorised by the company that filed it.

It is buried in volume

Bankruptcy filings are a small fraction of daily 8-K traffic, so finding them means processing everything else first.

The related codes are the early ones

Item 1.03 is the confirmation. Debt acceleration under Item 2.04 and a listing deficiency under Item 3.01 tend to arrive earlier, and they are filed under different codes with different language.

Company names are not keys

The filer name on EDGAR drifts from the name anyone uses. Matching by name gets you the wrong company, which on this event type is a serious error.

The request

One call

GET /risks/v1/events
  ?event_type=bankruptcy
  &since=2026-03-04

CIK is the canonical key. Resolve a ticker once with the by-ticker lookup and store the CIK, rather than matching on company names.

event_type

bankruptcy, read from Item 1.03. Related distress types are debt_acceleration and delisting_risk.

severity

Pinned to critical for this type rather than model-assigned, because the item code alone settles it.

summary

What the filing says, in up to 240 characters.

cik

The canonical company key. Every record carries it.

filed_at

When EDGAR received it, as distinct from event_date.

source_url

The filing itself, for the credit file.

The first 3 rows that call returns

Live, newest first

2026-08-27

BioXcel Therapeutics, Inc.

BTAI · Nasdaq · Life Sciences · 2026-08-27

BioXcel Therapeutics and subsidiaries filed voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions on August 27, 2026. Company entered stalking horse asset purchase agreement with Teva for substantially all assets for $57.5M upfront plus contingent...

bankruptcy

critical

Source filing →

2026-08-25

SANGAMO THERAPEUTICS, INC

SGMO · OTC · Life Sciences · 2026-08-25

Sangamo filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on June 23, 2026. On August 25, 2026, entered asset purchase agreement with PTC Therapeutics for sale of ST-920 assets for $111M cash plus up to $100M in milestone payments, subject to Bankruptcy...

bankruptcy

critical

Source filing →

2026-08-18

Bubblr Inc.

BBLR · OTC · Technology · 2026-08-18

U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming appointed Robert Stevens as Receiver for Bubblr, Inc. on August 18, 2026 in Case Number 2:26-cv-00020-ABJ.

bankruptcy

critical

Source filing →

What to know before you build on it

If you backtest this, measure survivorship first. On our own event study a little over half the bankruptcy rows had no usable price series afterwards, which biases any return you compute from them, and biases it optimistically, because the companies that disappeared did worst.
Keep the accession number in your evidence log. It is unique per filing and it is what makes the record auditable later.
Refreshed daily, not real time. This is a monitoring feed, not a trading feed.
Nothing here is advice. Severity ranks attention, and the filing is the source of truth.

Recent bankruptcy filings →

Common questions

Which 8-K item is a bankruptcy filing?

Item 1.03, "Bankruptcy or Receivership". It is one of the few items where the code alone settles the classification, which is why the severity for this type is pinned rather than model-assigned.

What comes before a bankruptcy in the filings?

Usually a listing deficiency under Item 3.01 or a debt acceleration under Item 2.04. Both are separate event types here, and both are worth monitoring alongside Item 1.03 rather than instead of it.

Try it

Run this query against the live data before you decide.

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