A Detroit consultant said yesterday that the city should be able to access capital markets and borrow at a rate of around 5 percent after it exits bankruptcy, as long as its tax revenue remains stable, Reuters reported yesterday. But even as Kenneth Buckfire, president of restructuring firm Miller Buckfire & Co., testified about the factors that will help Detroit woo investors, he said that the city will have to educate the municipal bond market about the "New Detroit," once it exits the largest-ever municipal bankruptcy. Buckfire, in testimony in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, said that the markets will respond well to Detroit's paring of its liabilities from $10 billion to $3 billion, 10-year cost certainties, and post-bankruptcy oversight. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes is currently conducting a hearing to determine the fairness and feasibility of Detroit's bankruptcy plan, part of which includes a $325 million exit facility financed through Barclays.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/usa-detroit-bankruptcy-borrow…
In related news, Detroit lost more than 1 million residents and three-quarters of its retail businesses on its way to bankruptcy, and now Comcast Corp. also wants leave, Bloomberg News reported today. The largest U.S. cable-television company says it will shed 2.5 million customers in Detroit and other Midwestern and Southern communities as part of a plan to buy No. 2 Time Warner Cable Inc. Relinquishing the markets will help keep Comcast’s market share below 30 percent of U.S. pay-TV homes — a level that regulators once set as a limit and Comcast has volunteered to honor. As it drops Detroit, Comcast would gain the nation’s top two markets, New York and Los Angeles. The $45.2 billion acquisition would enlarge Comcast by 7 million video customers. The castaways in Detroit, Minneapolis and elsewhere would belong to a new company, GreatLand Connections Inc., to be created in what the companies call a tax-efficient spinoff. The new company’s debt would exceed industry averages — something that has raised concerns about service in those communities.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-10-01/comcast-to-follow-1-mill…