Creditors back Ocean Rig’s financial restructuring

Offshore driller Ocean Rig has gained an approval from 75 percent of its creditors for its financial restructuring plan. 

Following its end of March filing for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection, which deals with insolvency cases where parties of interest involve more than one country, Ocean Rig said on Wednesday that 75% of its financial creditors signed or acceded to the restructuring support agreement from March pursuant to which the creditors have agreed to support and vote in favor of the financial restructuring.

The restructuring of the driller and its three subsidiaries, Drill Rigs Holdings (DRH), Drillships Financing Holding (DFH), and Drillships Ocean Ventures Inc. (DOV), will be implemented by four separate but interconnected schemes of arrangement under Cayman Islands law.

According to the company, all but the DRH scheme are inter-conditional, which means that court sanction of the DRH scheme is not required for the other schemes to become effective. In order for any scheme to be sanctioned, at least 75% in value and a majority in number of the holders of the claims present and voting at a meeting of creditors must vote to approve the scheme.

Therefore, the company said it has sufficient support from supporting creditors in order to implement the restructuring.

The driller is still facing delisting of its common stock from Nasdaq stock exchange. Namely, unless the company requests an appeal, trading of its common stock will be suspended at the opening of business on Thursday, April 6, 2017.

The value of Ocean Rig’s fleet took a massive hit declining by some 40 percent in the last twelve months, according to a report by VesselsValue. The driller’s debt at the end of last year was approximately $3.25 billion.

Offshore Energy Today Staff