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Big Tribune creditors seek control of bankruptcy case

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A large group of prominent investment firms sought to wrest control of the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case Tuesday in a move that threatens to intensify a pitched battle between senior and junior creditors.

In a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, the group asked Judge Kevin Carey to deny a request by Tribune management to extend its exclusive right to file a reorganization plan for the media company, which is the parent of the Los Angeles Times.

The group hopes to win its own right to propose a plan that would enhance senior creditor returns at the expense of the junior creditors.

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Calling itself Credit Agreement Lenders, the group owns $4.4 billion of the $8.2 billion in loans Tribune Chairman Sam Zell used to take the company private in 2007.

It is composed of a large number of hedge funds and other investment firms, including such heavyweights as Angelo, Gordon & Co., Oaktree Capital Management, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.

Absent from the group are big lenders to the Zell deal that also own the senior debt, including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Merrill Lynch & Co.

But JPMorgan, in filing its own objection Tuesday to management’s request to extend exclusivity, signaled its support for the Credit Agreement group, saying that “it is time for the parties . . . to move forward without further delay.”

The filings amount to a protest against Tribune’s attempts to broker a deal between the senior creditors and a group of militant junior creditors led by Centerbridge Partners, another big distressed-bond investor.

In late August, Centerbridge and other owners of $1.26 billion in junior bonds challenged a proposed reorganization plan that would swap debt for equity to recapitalize the company, arguing that the plan would give them a mere “sliver of equity” for their claims.

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On Nov. 13, Tribune petitioned the court to extend until March its exclusive right to forge a reorganization plan, partly so it would have time to work a compromise between the increasingly combative creditor factions.

But in its objection to the Tribune filing Tuesday, Credit Agreement Lenders complained that the Centerbridge group was dragging its heels and threatening to send the case into “a litigation morass of monumental proportions.”

The senior group said that it had already proposed a plan to Tribune management but that the company hadn’t acted on it. At the moment, the group complained, “there are no negotiations” and “no progress toward a consensual plan.” Consequently, the group concluded, it should be allowed to propose its plan to the court directly.

Judge Carey will take up the matter at a hearing in Delaware on Dec. 1. Tribune declined to comment Tuesday.

mdoneal@tribune.com

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