Energy Future Holdings Corp., the Texas power generator taken private in the biggest leveraged buyout ever, is close to obtaining a loan of more than $3 billion ahead of a bankruptcy filing that may come this month, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley are the key lenders vying to provide parts of the debtor-in-possession financing, and first-lien creditors to Energy Future’s Texas Competitive subsidiary have been invited to participate. The final terms and lenders may be decided next week. Some Energy Future creditors continued to negotiate in New York this week, seeking consensus on a restructuring plan ahead of filing for chapter 11. Texas’s largest electricity provider has struggled to reduce its debt since it was taken over in a $48 billion deal in 2007 led by KKR & Co., TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. The biggest-ever leveraged buyout left Energy Future with more than $40 billion in debt over a bet that natural gas prices would rise. Instead, they plunged to below $2 from a July 2008 high of more than $13 per million British thermal units.
