12:48pm Thursday 9th July 2009
By Owen McAteer
A care home group employing hundreds of North-East workers could be put up for sale by the end of the week.
Four Seasons Health Care, which employs 200 people at its offices in Lingfield Point, Darlington, as well as a large number of care home staff, is expected to be put on the market after a deadline for its backers to accept proposals to restructure its massive debts passed without agreement.
Despite only a small number of its 35 creditors rejecting the proposals for its £1.5bn debt, a condition of the plan was that all accepted it by July 6.
A Four Seasons board meeting, either today or tomorrow, is widely expected to put the business on the market.
A spokesman said: “The group has yet to decide whether to launch a formal sale process.
“The group will consider the responses of the investors to understand their position.
“There will be a board meeting later this week which will determine the group’s course of action.”
Four Seasons owns and operates 52 care homes in the region, but the spokesman added that neither a restructuring or a sale process was expected to affect the day-today operations of those.
The situation is complicated by the fact the company has a complex 11 tiers of debt and the 35 creditors have vastly different stakes in the business.
The restructuring plan was put forward on June 17 by Hatfield Philips International, a financial trustee that represents Four Seasons’ senior creditors, which set the July 6 deadline.
Almost immediately it emerged that one group of smaller lenders, while supporting a restructuring of the group in principal, had found the terms put forward unacceptable.
The plan would have roughly halved Four Seasons’ debt and given half of the company’s equity to a group of senior lenders, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, Fortis and Nationwide.
The balance of the shares would be split among the rest of the creditors.
Despite nearly a year of negotiations, Four Seasons has repeatedly said there was virtually no chance that its 400 homes would be closed or its 15,000 residents forced to move.
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