A $55 million piece of Spiegel's bank debt was auctioned off in the high 50s last week with the paper said to have come out of Europe. Traders said the sale of the bank debt for the bankrupt-direct retailer was a one-off trade noting that Spiegel's bank debt is very illiquid. Calls to James Brewster, senior v.p. and cfo, were referred to a company spokesman, who declined to comment on the auction.
At the time the company filed for bankruptcy, its top 19 creditors were bank debt holders with more than $1 billion in claims. Commerzbank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, DZ Bank, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, LandesBank Hessen-Thuringen, Bankgesellschaft Berlin, J.P. Morgan, Westdeutsche Landesbank and ABN Amro were listed in court documents as the top 10 holders of claims.
A company spokeswoman noted that Spiegel was recently granted an extension to the period of exclusivity during which it can file a plan of reorganization. She declined to provide a time line for when a plan would be submitted.