Altice France’s restructuring negotiations has been one of the hottest talks of the distress town since last year. With the company now preparing to enter into accelerated safeguard proceedings, we went through what happened so far in our inaugural episode of Distressed Diaries — a brand new 9fin podcast series focused on distressed debt in Europe.

Senior distressed reporter Bianca Boorer, host of the series, travelled to Paris to meet with key advisors involved in the negotiations. She sits down with Saam Golshani, partner at White & Case who acted for Altice France and its shareholders, Jean-Pierre Farges, restructuring partner and head of Gibson Dunn’s restructuring practice in Europe who represented the ad hoc group of secured creditors, and restructuring partners Lionel Spizzichino and Batiste Saint-Guily from Wilkie who represented a group of predominantly unsecured creditors.

In the podcast, we take a look at Altice France’s journey from March 2024 with the earnings call in March 2024 where management caused panic in the market announcing its intention to do discounted transactions to bring leverage down, to creditors forming the first co-op of this size in Europe and finally coming to an agreement in February this year.

We also discuss what the deal means for the restructuring market — will LMEs continue to crop up in Europe or will directors duties put people off risking putting the company at risk? Tune in to find out.

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