High Court puts Swissco under interim judicial management

THE Singapore High Court has approved an application to place Swissco Holdings and its subsidiary, Swissco Offshore Pte Ltd, under interim judicial management (IJM).

Unveiling the court ruling on the IJM before trading close on Friday, Swissco also said Ee Meng Yen Angela and Purandar Janampalli Rao of Ernest & Young LLP had been appointed as the joint interim judicial managers of the holding company and its subsidiary.

A pre-trial conference of the judicial management (JM) applications of the two entities is fixed for hearing on Dec 1 at 4pm.

Swissco filed for JM after failing to win its senior lenders' support to offload debts on its balance sheet for a few cents to a dollar to an undisclosed Chinese investor.

In the weeks leading up to announcing its JM application, Swissco also struggled to seek noteholders' support to restructure a S$100 million note issue maturing in April 2018.

The holding company announced the intent to file for JM during its third quarter results briefing in mid-November.

Swissco posted a net loss of US$296 million for the third quarter on massive impairment charges plus losses from it associates and joint ventures.