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Elliott Tells Court It Was Barred from Seeking Oncor Financing

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An attorney for Elliott Management yesterday complained to a bankruptcy court judge that the owner of Texas's largest power distribution business did not provide the investment fund with information needed to line up financing for its offer of more than $18 billion to buy the company, Reuters reported. Instead, Energy Future Holdings Corp., the bankrupt majority owner of Oncor Electric Delivery Co., struck a deal this month to sell its ownership of the business to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for $9 billion in cash, valuing the company at $18.1 billion. A lawyer for Elliott Management, which spent years battling Argentina over its defaulted debt, told the court that the fund has enough debt in Oncor's parent, Energy Future, to block the Berkshire deal. The fund has argued that its own $18.5 billion Oncor deal would be better for creditors. Read more

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Berkshire's Oncor Bid Is $300 Million Short, Elliott Management Says

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Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s bid for Oncor Electric Delivery Co. is about $300 million less than what Elliott Management Corp. wants, as the two investors fight over the value of the Texas-based power company, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. Berkshire’s agreement to buy the utility values it at $18.2 billion to $18.25 billion, Oncor Chief Executive Officer Robert Shapard said yesterday. Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. is unhappy with the terms of the deal and is proposing a restructuring that values the Texas utility at $18.5 billion, according to a letter it released yesterday. Suitors have been lining up for a chance to buy Oncor since 2014, when its parent Energy Future Holdings Corp. filed for chapter 11 protection. Berkshire must still gain the approval of Texas regulators who’ve already rebuffed two prior attempts to buy the utility by NextEra Energy Inc. and Hunt Consolidated Inc. Read more

Get additional insights and analysis on valuation topics by picking up a copy of ABI’s updated A Practical Guide to Bankruptcy Valuation

Navicent Outbids Prime to Acquire Bankrupt Georgia Hospital

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Macon, Ga.-based Navicent Health will acquire Milledgeville, Ga.-based Oconee Regional Medical Center, which filed for chapter 11 protection in May, Becker's Hospital Review reported yesterday. ORMC filed the necessary motions in bankruptcy court in May to sell its assets to Prime Healthcare Foundation, the Ontario, Calif.-based nonprofit arm of Prime Healthcare Services. The motions included the opportunity for other interested parties to submit bids to acquire ORMC. The auction was held June 29 and Navicent was the highest bidder. The following day, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Georgia approved the transaction. Read more

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire to Buy Electric-Grid Giant Oncor

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Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. struck a deal to buy one of the country’s biggest power-transmission companies, cementing electricity as one of the conglomerate’s largest businesses, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Berkshire said that it will buy bankrupt Energy Future Holdings Corp. for $9 billion in cash, giving Buffett its Texas-based Oncor. Including debt, the deal has an enterprise value of about $18 billion. Oncor is owned by Energy Future, formerly TXU, which was the subject of the biggest leveraged buyout on record in 2007. Laden with debt, Energy Future filed for bankruptcy protection in 2014.

Court Rules Against Westinghouse in Nuclear Acquisition Deal

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Westinghouse Electric Co. was dealt another blow on Tuesday when its chances of getting nearly $2 billion for its doomed acquisition of a nuclear construction firm were extinguished by the Delaware Supreme Court, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. The Cranberry, Pa.-based nuclear technology firm is working through a complicated bankruptcy caused in large part by its December 2015 acquisition of Stone & Webster from Chicago Bridge & Iron. For more than a year, Westinghouse has been asserting that it is due $2.15 billion for that deal. Since 2008, Westinghouse and Stone & Webster had been partners in building the first four new nuclear plants in the U.S. in three decades. The projects are worth tens of billions of dollars and by late 2015, all the major parties involved — Westinghouse, Stone & Webster, and the utilities that commissioned those plants in Georgia and South Carolina — were suing each other, arguing about who bears responsibility for delays and $2 billion in cost overruns.

Toshiba to Meet Shareholders with No Chip Unit Deal Signed

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Japan's Toshiba Corp. is expected to face the wrath of shareholders at its annual meeting yesterday after failing to sign a deal to sell its flash memory chip unit by a self-imposed deadline, Reuters reported yesterday. The ailing Japanese conglomerate is rushing to sell the prized unit to cover billions of dollars in cost overruns at its bankrupt Westinghouse nuclear unit. It had promised to sign a definitive agreement with a preferred bidder by yesterday’s meeting. But the preferred bidder, a group led by Japanese government investors and including U.S. private equity firm Bain Capital, has not agreed on conditions of the deal.