Assets not enough to pay Debts of £135m15 Jan 2024 09:28
Board denies any suggestion that it preferred the interests of Anavio over COPL's shareholders. Having taken legal advice in relation to its duties, the Board specifically considered the interests of various stakeholders, including COPL's shareholders. Had the Board taken steps to wind down COPL, as some shareholders suggest, it was the Board's business judgment that COPL shareholders would have almost certainly been entirely wiped out. In considering various options, the Board concluded that the value of COPL's assets were insufficient to cover the claims of secured and unsecured creditors which today stand in excess of $135 million as compared with approximately $1 million of cash on hand on a group wide basis (the majority of such liquidity being at COPL's US subsidiary which is subject directly to the security interests of the senior lender). In addition to the $135 million of secured obligations which take priority over equity an orderly formal restructuring proceeding would require a super priority loan of approximately $10 million, putting equity investors of COPL even further "out of the money". As such, the steps taken by the Board (including the recent hiring of an independent engineering consulting firm) were designed to give COPL an opportunity to become more viable over time and to provide shareholders with a potential opportunity to realize some value (over no value in the wind down scenario).