Advisors to secured creditors in Altice France are still corralling signatures and hoping to finalise the weekslong simmering co-op agreement in the coming days, two sources familiar told 9fin.
Gibson Dunn and Rothschild held a call with around 450 senior creditors to Altice France’s debt on Friday (12 April) to go over the agreement, they said.
The co-op has been designed as a defence tactic to the company’s request for creditors to partake in discounted exchanges if they want the company to use the roughly €2.1bn of proceeds from the data centres and Altice Media unrestricted asset sales to address its debt.
Of the €20bn of secured debt that Altice France has outstanding, the advisors are in touch with over 50% of that debt, the first source said. 9fin previously reported on 3 April that around $12bn of secured debt holders had agreed to join by that point.
There are no trading restrictions under the co-op agreement however the agreement will be passed down to anyone who trades into the debt, the first and second source explained.
On 12 April, Bloomberg reported that the agreement will be for a period of six months with the option to extend twice for up to 60 days. The report also said creditors had a 15 day window to sign up to the deal and a steerCo containing 15 members has already signed up to the deal, it said.
“It's a really big problem for Drahi to execute everything given the senior creditors have organised,” said the first source. “I’m pleasantly surprised that people organised so quickly.”
The agreement is a relatively new tool in Europe but has been used more commonly in the US like in the case of DISH.
French cargo company Worldwide Flight Services’s creditors signed a co-op agreement last year wherein they agreed to not participate in a bond buyback, which allowed them to push back on terms with the company, according to Bloomberg.
Altice France’s capital structure is here. Altice France did not respond for comment in time for publication.
Cross-holder group plans
Milbank and Houlihan Lokey are working with cross-holders of SSNs and SUNs, as reported. A third source who is close to this group said Willkie Farr is also advising this group. A majority of the debt held in the group is unsecured, the third source said.
“The crossholder group is in trouble as the unsecured can get pretty hurt,” said the first source.
The third source however argued that a scenario wherein the company and the secureds strike a deal that goes against the unsecured will not be feasible.
“I don’t think this will be feasible in France because there is no way the shareholder can keep control of his company.”
“We don’t want to play one group against another. We want to work all together against company and shareholder,” they said. “The company has the lead on timing, the question is on what is Altice’s next move?”
The third source said the cross-holder advisors also held a call with around 300 creditors three weeks ago after the Altice announcement. They said that a co-op agreement within their group would “make sense at some point”.
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