Revlon Inc.’s effort to escape having to file for bankruptcy is pitching two Wall Street billionaires toward a showdown, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The cosmetics company, majority-owned by billionaire Ron Perelman’s MacAndrews & Forbes Inc., is working to ward off bankruptcy and protect the company’s equity by pressuring bondholders to swap out their holdings for roughly a third of their face value, in exchange for getting cash or a mix of cash and new debt. The company is at risk of chapter 11 if certain bonds are still outstanding by mid-November, triggering the accelerated repayment of other Revlon debts. Activist investor Carl Icahn owns enough of the company’s bonds to potentially derail efforts by Revlon to complete the proposed bond exchange, which would lighten the company’s debt load and avoid the need for an imminent chapter 11 filing. Icahn hasn’t participated in the transaction, out of concerns the offer doesn’t include sufficient returns for bondholders.
