Defunct telecommunications company Nortel Networks Inc. won a victory in its fight with federal pension regulators when a bankruptcy judge rejected a briefing schedule proposed by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), Bloomberg BNA reported yesterday. Nortel, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009, had clashed with the PBGC over how to value the company’s unfunded pension liabilities. The PBGC claimed in 2009 that Nortel owed $593 million in pension payments, but the agency upped that amount to $708 million in 2014, a move that Nortel said lacked factual support. The judge’s decision yesterday setting an evidentiary hearing for Jan. 9-11, 2017, is a win for Nortel, which argued that the PBGC should be forced to turn over documents relevant to its valuation process.
