The judge overseeing Alta Mesa Resources Inc.’s bankruptcy approved the appointment of a mediator to help creditors resolve their differences over how to carve up proceeds from the company’s chapter 11 sale, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. An official committee of unsecured creditors pushed for the appointment after mounting an attack on Wells Fargo Bank NA, the administrative agent for the bank loans of Alta Mesa and its energy storage and transportation unit Kingfisher Midstream LLC. Alta Mesa and Kingfisher are being sold together to a private-equity venture for $320 million, a sum that doesn’t cover their bank debt. The committee has accused Wells Fargo of stripping assets from Alta Mesa before its bankruptcy, then pulling the rug out by cutting the company’s borrowing capacity. The committee also is seeking to stop the bank from collecting an immediate distribution of $60 million in cash from Kingfisher. The less money Wells Fargo can collect as the top-ranking lender, the more is potentially available for unsecured creditors, which otherwise may recover little to nothing. Wells Fargo has said the committee’s claims are baseless and denied doing anything improper to push Alta Mesa into bankruptcy.
