Singapore’s Swissco, a debt-burdened provider of offshore rigs and vessels, has filed an application to be placed under judicial management after it failed to reach a debt restructuring deal with creditors.
The company in its quarterly report last week said it had reached an impasse with its major lenders, citing significant gap between the group’s aim of sustaining its business in the long term and the position of the lenders.
“As such, the Group is unable to get an agreement on the terms of the restructuring plan,” Swissco said last week, adding it would file for an interim judicial management order.
The Group’s total liabilities were $291.6 million as at September 30, 2016, due mainly to the increase in trade and other payables and bank borrowings.
Swissco slumped to a loss of $296 million, from a profit of $11 million a year ago. The company attributed the major part of the loss – $180 million – on impairments on rigs, vessels, and receivables and loans to joint venture.
Swissco said the judicial management would enable either the survival of the company in part or whole as a going concern or a scheme of arrangement with its creditors; or a more advantageous realization of assets than in a winding-up.
What it promised last week, Swissco did on Monday. Swissco Holdings Limited and its wholly-owned subsidiary Swissco Offshore applied in the High Court of the Republic of Singapore for orders that they be placed under judicial management, as well as for orders that interim judicial managers be appointed pending the hearings of the JM Applications.
The IJM Applications have been fixed for hearing on Friday, November 25, 2016.
Offshore Energy Today Staff