PG&E Corp. proposes to pay half of its $13.5 billion settlement with California wildfire victims in company shares, a move that would make victims the utility’s largest shareholders — and jeopardize payments if PG&E sparks future fires, the Wall Street Journal reported. As part of its plan to exit bankruptcy, PG&E would pay fire-victim claims through a trust funded with equal parts cash and stock. The trust would own 20.9 percent of PG&E’s shares upon the company’s emergence from chapter 11, PG&E has said, and would gradually sell the stakes over several years to compensate individuals who lost family members and property. While share-funded trusts have been used before to settle claims from asbestos victims and others, some legal experts say that the PG&E trust would pose an unusual set of risks for claimants, tying their payment prospects to a company still scrambling to reduce the threat that its aging electrical grid will start fires. Since the fall of 2017, state investigators have linked PG&E equipment to 18 wildfires that killed 107 people and destroyed more than 15,700 homes.
