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Please Name Dissident GM Bondholders, Please

Posted Sunday, July 5, 2009 - 10:14am

This is a disturbing trend that should have been curbed by now in the business press. The New York Times reports that dissident General Motors (GMGMQ) bondholders may object to the Obamastration’s goal of getting an asset sale to a new company done by July 10. The story mentions lawyers for ”three” holdout GM creditors.

Isn't this a transparent Chapter 11 proceeding, funded by, um...taxpayer money? Why can’t we learn the identities of these three holdouts? It’s a repeat of what we went through with the Chrysler bankruptcy, when several large creditors remained shrouded in anonymity until they were outed late in the game.

Whenever I see one of these reports, I’ve trained myself to expect this question to come up. But I’m getting tired of asking it.

Matthew DeBord has written about the auto industry for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and Car Design News.

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Submitted by Lawrence D. Loeb on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 1:58am.

Your post

The names are available on the public docket. Patton Boggs filed the names of their clients, as required under Bankruptcy Rule 2019, on June 9th. They then filed an amendment, that includes the trading data, on June 26th. By the way, the names of the three clients are Harold A. John, Mark Modica, and Wade McGee. If you need to harass them (although I don't know why any sane person would), their contact information was disclosed in the first filing. If you need to find information on bankruptcy cases in the future, you might try using your publisher's account on PACER (a paid service that provides subscribers with access to all court records for the Federal Judiciary - including Bankruptcy Courts). If you aren't able to access PACER, most companies provide access to their dockets through their claims agent via the web. The site for GM is managed by Garden City Group and is located at www.gmcourtdocs.com. It might be useful in the future for you to do a minimal amount of research before "getting tired" of the lack of information that has already been disclosed to the rest of the world.

Submitted by Matthew DeBord on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 9:25am.

Thanks

Thanks for your comment. My understanding is that the Patton Boggs group has been known for several weeks now. What I was complaining about in my post is the weird reluctance in the business press to disclose these identities, even when they are known, in the public record, and have been reported on.

However, with the Sunday Chapter 11 decision, this bondholder action seems to have been swept aside.