Edging towards a settlement

摘要

The company's boss is merely "cautiously optimistic". Not everyone is on board. But there are good reasons to believe that the six-year deadlock over one of the Middle East's biggest corporate collapses could be broken before long. Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company (AHAB), whose interests range from industrial products to fast food, defaulted in 2009, amid claims-still untested in court-that it had suffered a huge fraud. Attempts to reach a settlement with creditors got nowhere until April this year, when AHAB agreed terms with a steering committee representing foreign creditors. This week it presented the plan to all the 95 international banks and hedge funds concerned, which between them are owed $4 billion. Their response was "encouraging", says an adviser to AHAB, who is confident that "the vast majority" would have voted for the plan if asked to do so after the meeting (in practice it is the firms' credit committees that must decide).