|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Blackstone's TeamHealth Mulls Restructuring Proposals; Serta Wins Chapter 11 Approval
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy’s Daily Briefing. It’s Thursday, June 8. In today’s briefing, Blackstone-owned TeamHealth has received a pair of competing offers from two of its biggest creditors that are giving the struggling physician-staffing company starkly different options to repay over $1 billion in debt due next year. Also, Serta Simmons Bedding won court approval for its chapter 11 plan to cut its $1.6 billion in debt, handing control to its top lenders and ending the bedding company’s long feud with a minority group.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TeamHealth is working with financial adviser PJT Partners as it considers competing proposals.
PHOTO: ADOLPHE PIERRE-LOUIS/ZUMA PRESS
|
|
|
|
|
|
Blackstone’s TeamHealth weighs debt proposals ahead of loan maturity. Blackstone-owned TeamHealth has received a pair of competing offers from two of its biggest creditors, giving the struggling physician-staffing company starkly different options to repay over $1 billion in debt due next year, according to people familiar with the matter.
Pacific Investment Management Co., which is known as Pimco and is the largest holder of TeamHealth’s loans maturing in February, has proposed swapping those loans for new debt backed by some of the company’s assets, such as its accounts receivable from government entities like Medicare, the people said. The plan would allow TeamHealth to avoid defaulting on its debts but would give Pimco first dibs on some of TeamHealth’s assets if it goes bankrupt, a major advantage relative to other creditors, according to the people.
Ares Management, which holds hundreds of millions of dollars of the company’s bonds, has a different plan: It has requested that Blackstone, Team Health’s private-equity backer since 2016, kick in around $250 million of new money to TeamHealth, the people said. Combined with new debts Ares would provide, the funds would help TeamHealth pay down loans due next year.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The judge found no evidence that Serta Simmons or its majority lenders acted improperly when they hammered out a 2020 debt deal. PHOTO: RICHARD B. LEVINE/ZUMA PRESS
|
|
|
|
|
|
Serta Simmons seals chapter 11 restructuring. The judge presiding over Serta Simmons Bedding’s chapter 11 case approved the company’s $1.6 billion debt-cutting plan, handing control to its top lenders and ending the bedding company’s long feud with a minority group.
Judge David Jones of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston on Tuesday found no evidence that Serta Simmons or its majority lenders acted improperly when they hammered out a 2020 debt deal that subordinated the claims of other creditors and laid the groundwork for its chapter 11 case.
The judge also approved the company’s bankruptcy-exit plan, which follows the creditor hierarchy established in 2020, leaving virtually no value for minority lenders including Apollo Global Management, Angelo Gordon and Gamut Capital. They could try to appeal the judge’s ruling.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Binance.US was deeply unprofitable in 2022. The U.S. arm of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, lost $181 million last year, documents filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday showed.
The SEC sued Binance and its founder—Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ—on Monday, alleging that the overseas company operated an illegal trading platform in the U.S. and misused customers’ funds. The agency’s complaint revealed that Binance had at least $11.6 billion in revenue between June 2018 and July 2021, most of which was derived from transaction fees.
|
|
|
|
|
GameStop shares fall as it terminates CEO. Shares in GameStop plunged Wednesday after the company terminated Chief Executive Matt Furlong and elevated Ryan Cohen to executive chairman, the latest shake-up at the videogame retailer, which has been struggling to find new ways to juice sales.
Cohen first joined the board as a director in early 2021 and rose to
|
|
|
|
chairman that June as part of a restructuring of GameStop’s board. The company then overhauled its executive team, hiring Furlong from Amazon for the CEO job.
GameStop shares fell 19% in after-hours trading.
|
|
|
|
|
Treasury’s $1 trillion debt deluge threatens to drive up borrowing costs. Investors are bracing for a flood of more than $1 trillion of Treasury bills in the wake of the debt-ceiling fight, potentially sparking a new bout of volatility in financial markets.
Some on Wall Street fear that roughly $850 billion in bond issuance that was shelved until a debt-ceiling deal was passed—sales expected between now and the end of September, according to JPMorgan analysts—will overwhelm buyers, jolting markets and raising short-term borrowing costs.
Few expect major upheaval, but many worry about the potential for unforeseen problems in the financial plumbing—where trillions of dollars worth of transactions occur daily—that could send tremors throughout markets. Many remember how money-market rates skyrocketed in 2019 during a period of low liquidity, necessitating intervention by the Federal Reserve.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chinese junk bonds are back on the trash heap. It was a false dawn, in hindsight. Asia’s junk-bond market had a brief flicker of life earlier this year, when a Chinese company sold a $400 million bond in January, and a second bond a month later. Wanda Properties’ two deals raised hopes that a once-busy market was starting to return to health.
Four months later, Wanda has been downgraded by major credit-rating companies, its recently issued
|
|
|
|
bonds have lost around half of their value and no other Chinese company has sold a high-yield bond.
“It’s really bad,” said Thu Ha Chow, head of Asian fixed income at Robeco, about the market for junk bonds sold by Chinese property developers, once the biggest source of supply in Asia. “Think back to the global financial crisis. That wasn’t as messy as this. There was two-way action then, but this feels like things are moving in one direction.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
