Official advisers to Washington Prime Group Inc. stockholders, skeptical of the company’s proposed sale to SVPGlobal, are trying to slow down the mall landlord’s bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. A government-appointed group of Washington Prime stockholders has asked Judge Marvin Isgur to extend key deadlines in the insolvency proceedings by more than a month, arguing in court papers that the group’s advisers don’t have enough time to evaluate the real estate investment trust’s chapter 11 exit plan. Washington Prime may be worth more than the plan implies, but more time is needed to figure that out, the group says. Washington Prime entered bankruptcy last month after the pandemic forced shoppers to stay home, crushing its tenants and sapping revenues. But rising vaccination rates and a resurgent U.S. economy have begun to reverse the company’s fortunes, making it difficult to pin a value on its portfolio of roughly 100 shopping centers across the U.S. The company plans to exit bankruptcy by handing ownership to investment firm SVPGlobal in exchange for debt forgiveness, assuming no better offers come in. But the plan’s August approval deadline leaves relatively little time for competing bidders to make moves, and the company has said new offers must be all cash and exceed $2.3 billion. Read more.
Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available at the ABI Store.
