As the V.I. Public Services Commission prepares for public hearings this week on whether to approve transfer of control of Vitelco phone and Innovative Cable TV, formerly property of bankrupt mogul Jeffrey Prosser, the British Virgin Islands has just approved transfer of Prosser’s BVI Cable TV.
ICC has been in bankruptcy since July 2006. The Rural Telephone Finance Cooperative (RTFC), a private, nonprofit lender to rural utilities, is the largest single lender to ICC and holds a $525 million judgment against it and a separate $100 million judgment against Prosser personally. Efforts by the court-appointed Chapter 11 trustee to auction the component companies were hampered in part by the global financial crisis. Additionally, in January, RTFC’s financial arm, National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC), announced it would make a credit bid to acquire the outstanding stock of BVI Cable and the other ICC-owned companies.
A credit bid occurs when a creditor bids for a property at auction, offering not cash but part or all of the value of the debt owed it. In this case, the credit bid is conditioned on approval of regulatory authorities in the jurisdictions where ICC’s businesses operate. Along with the U.S. Virgin Islands companies and BVI Cable, ICC also owns several other small Caribbean cable television and communications companies, including St. Martin Mobile, Martinique TV Cable and others.
The telephone and cable television operations in the U.S. Virgin Islands are regulated by the Public Services Commision (PSC), which, by V.I. statute, must grant approval before a sale or transfer of control is enacted over a utility.
Last week, the minister for Communications and Works and the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of the BVI approved the application of CFC to acquire BVI Cable as part of an agreement with the ICC Chapter 11 Trustee Stan Springel, according to a statement from CFC.
These are the first transfer-of-control approvals ever granted under the BVI’s new Telecommunications Act, according to CFC.
"CFC has already received interim bankruptcy-court approval, U.S. antitrust clearance and now the BVI approvals," said CFC Chief Financial Officer Steven Lilly in the company’s announcement. "Once it receives the remaining regulatory approvals, CFC will request authorization from the bankruptcy court to proceed with the transfer-of-control process and acquire and rehabilitate BVI Cable and other ICC-owned companies in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Dutch St. Maarten."
