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HomeNewsArchivesProsser?s French Properties Bring Only $22 Million

Prosser?s French Properties Bring Only $22 Million

Dec. 9, 2008 – Jeffrey Prosser?s former cable holdings, in the Eastern Caribbean and in France, have been sold for $22 million according to the court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy case of the former chief executive officer and owner of Innovative Telephone.
These are the so-called Group II assets whose sale must be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Judith K. Fitzgerald. Stan Springel, the chapter 11 trustee in the case, announced the sale in a filing with the court. Prosser is in involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy and Innovative Communications Co., the parent company of the Innovative Telephone, or Vitelco, as the monopolistic local phone company is known locally and legally which he owns, is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Prosser’s assets are being sold off to pay close to a billion dollars owed to various creditors.
The Group II properties include cable TV operations in Martinique and Guadeloupe, both French island colonies in the Caribbean as well as other cable operations (never fully described) in eastern France.
The sales price, interestingly for a U.S. court document, was quoted in Euros, 17 million of them; that equates, the court was told, to $21,990,000 on the date of the sale.
The price is a drastic reduction from what Prosser?s lawyers said the properties were worth when they argued in court some 23 months ago. On Jan. 9, 2007 in Fitzgerald?s Pittsburgh courtroom, one of Prosser?s lawyers said the properties were worth $100 million; on Jan. 30 of that year. At another Pittsburgh hearing, another one of Prosser?s attorneys announced that "a memorandum of understanding" had been signed for the sale of the same properties for $70 million. (See "Prosser Sells French Island Cable Companies for $70 Million").
The properties are, more formally, owned by Minion Corp. N.V., once a wholly-owned Prosser firm, and its stock was purchased by Altice Services LLP, a British firm.
Springel worked on the sale in conjunction with Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin, a mainland financial organization recently brought into the process by Springel. The court document said that Springel, HLHZ and the Rural Telephone Financial Cooperative, long Prosser?s bankers and now his principal creditors, all agreed that the "Buyer?s bid is the highest and best qualified Bid available…."
If the future resembles the past it is likely the Prosser and his lawyers will soon charge that a higher price should have been obtained for the properties, a posture they have taken on other sales in the past.

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