A French bank sold an $11 million piece of bank debt for The Spiegel Group in an auction last week. The piece was sold around the 71-73 range, according to loan market participants. The trade marks an uptick in the name, which traded in the high 50s earlier this year (LMW, 3/1). Spiegel is currently wading through bankruptcy and is working with its financial advisor, Miller Buckfire Lewis Ying & Co., to sell some of its businesses, including Eddie Bauer. One dealer suggested that investors were becoming more comfortable with valuations applied to the businesses.
Spiegel has already reached an agreement to sell substantially all of the assets of Newport News for $25 million in cash and the assumption of certain liabilities to Pangea Holdings. If there are competing bids for the business, an auction will be held on May 11, explained a Spiegel spokeswoman. The company is in negotiations with a party interested in buying its catalog business, but the spokeswoman would not disclose the identity of the bidder. She added that the company is still in the early stages of the potential Eddie Bauer divestiture and had not yet identified a stalking horse bidder.
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. Spiegel's bank debt paper rarely trades in the secondary market.