JPM/NTL.
Not sure how old this news is:
portal.telegraph.co.uk
JP Morgan owed $931m by NTL
By George Trefgarne, Financial Correspondent (Filed: 12/12/2001)
JP MORGAN, the American investment bank, heads the list of more than 40 international banks which are owed $10.6 billion in unsecured loans by NTL, the debt-laden cable company struggling to stay above water.
According to data from Dealogic Loanware, which monitors bank debt, JP Morgan has the biggest NTL exposure of $931.78m (£650m), followed by Morgan Stanley with $621.61m. However, the loans may sometimes be further syndicated beyond the public announcements on which Dealogic bases its research.
In addition to its bank debt, NTL has about $10 billion of bonds outstanding. They too have slumped and yesterday the 2006 9.5pc issue was yielding 36.7pc. The bonds are mostly held by specialist investors in high-yield debt.
Investors are urgently awaiting news of how Barclay Knapp, NTL's American chief executive, will stave off a major restructuring of NTL or possible bankruptcy.
Yesterday, NTL's shares - once near $130 - dropped a further 10 cents to 89 cents. NTL is loss-making and on its latest published forecasts is fully funded until the end of 2003, but by then will be down to £5m of cash resources, enough for two days' interest payments.
NTL is Britain's biggest cable operator, with 3m customers, but is quoted on America's Nasdaq exchange. It has embarked on a cost cutting exercise and on Monday laid off 2,000 workers, on top of the 6,000 redundancies earlier this year.
If NTL collapsed with $20 billion of debt, it would be the world's biggest bankruptcy, beating the previous record set by energy group Enron earlier this month, which collapsed with $10 billion of debt.
The British banks with the heaviest exposure are Royal Bank of Scotland, which is owed nearly $600m, and Bank of Scotland (now part of HBOS) with more than $270m. Royal Bank said it could not comment on individual customers, but a routine trading statement is expected in the next 10 days.
NTL is still exploring a number of funding options, including the £1.5 billion sale of its network of 3,000 broadcasting masts. However, that is proceeeding slowly.
If NTL fails, many of the same banks would be hit as were caught up in Enron's demise. According to filings with the US Securities & Exchange Commission, Chase Manhattan, JP Morgan's parent, has $2 billion of exposure to Enron.
Royal Bank of Scotland is thought to have about $300m of loans to Enron. |
