|
NTL to restructure: report
|
 |
January 27, 2002: 6:29 a.m. ET
UK cable group to announce plan to deal with 12-billion-pound debt, paper says
|
LONDON (CNN) - UK cable group NTL this week will announce a major restructuring plan to deal with its £12-billion ($17-billion) debt, according to a report.
NTL will ask its creditors and shareholders to approve a plan that would include writing off more than half of the company's debt, The Sunday Times said.
For months, there has been speculation NTL had been discussing a financial restructuring, but the company has never commented on such a possibility.
"We will go public and confirm for the first time that we need to recapitialise," the newspaper quoted a company source as saying.
NTL will tell its creditors it can support borrowings of about £5.7 billion, but that the other £6.3 billion of its debt will have to be written off, the paper said.
It said NTL bondholders will be asked to convert debt into equity in a move that would see them owning between 50 and 70 percent of the restructured company.
Shareholders will end up with 15 percent of the restructured company, with the remaining shares being owned by a strategic investor who will put £1.4 billion into the business, the paper reported.
NTL's shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, although it operates mainly in Europe.
The company provides telephone, cable television and Internet services in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland.
In December, NTL announced it was cutting 2,000 more jobs and freezing managerial pay in an effort to reduce costs.
The company, which axed nearly 5,000 jobs in the past year, said the cuts would go in the UK under a compulsory and voluntary redundancy programme, reducing its UK workforce to 13,000. 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
