Punch Taverns has announced that a committee of its senior bondholders, under the auspices of the Association of British Insurers (ABI), which earlier this year described the pub company’s restructuring proposals as being “some distance away from being acceptable to us”, has now joined the process of engagement regarding its debt restructuring.
The company, which early this month said it was “confident”that its debt restructure would occur in the second half of 2013, announced that it was continuing its process of engagement with stakeholders that now includes the ABI Special Committee of noteholders and its advisers.
It said it would provide an update on these discussions and the implementation of a restructuring in due course.
Finance director Steve Dando told M&C Report last week that he’s “confident” Punch’s debt restructure will occur in the second half of 2013.
Dando said: “Extending the deadline gives us more time to talk to people. I don’t think anything has changed in the attitude of people, we just need more time.”
After why the original deadline was not met, he said: “It’s quite a complex restructure. There are 16 different tranches of debt, a lot of people need to agree to the restructure and it makes sense to give people as much time as possible.”
Asked how confident he was that it would be resolved in the new time frame, he said: “We are confident. We missed the first timetable but we are pretty confident of being able to deliver something [within the new timetable].”
He said revised proposals for the restructure would need to be published before the process is completed.
