NEW YORK: Apollo Global Management Inc’s Brightspeed reached a deal with a group of lenders to slash US$1.1bil of the telecom company’s debt and receive US$3.7bil of new capital.
Brightspeed is getting the new capital from all of its secured lenders and Apollo, according to a statement. Amendments to the fibre firm’s existing loan and credit facilities eliminated the debt.
Bloomberg reported in July that Apollo and Brightspeed lenders including Bank of America Corp and Barclays Plc were holding restructuring talks for a slug of Brightspeed debt. The deal under discussion called for the banks to take haircut on the value of their existing loans.
Apollo and Brightspeed both declined to comment beyond the statement. A spokesperson for Barclays declined to comment. Representatives for Bank of America didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Brightspeed accounts for one of the last remaining tranches of so-called hung debt that banks were not able to sell to investors after the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates in 2022. — Bloomberg
