Atlanta – US Airways will pitch its $8.6 billion unsolicited offer for Delta Air Lines in a meeting this week with Delta and the committee representing the unsecured creditors in Delta’s bankruptcy case, a lawyer for the committee said Tuesday.
The lawyer, Daniel Golden, said the committee’s advisers will be present at the meeting in New York, along with US Airways officials and Delta senior executives.
Neither Golden nor spokesmen for Atlanta-based Delta and Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways would say when the meeting will take place.
Golden said the creditors committee will go into the meeting with an open mind, even as Delta has said it opposes a merger and hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in the first half of next year as a standalone company. The head of Delta’s pilots union has expressed support for Delta’s plan. The union is a member of the creditors committee.
“We have great respect for Delta’s management,” Golden said. “We think they’ve done a very good job in Chapter 11. But at the end of the day, we’re going to make a determination about what works best for the estate and the unsecured creditors.”
The meeting will be the first between all three sides since US Airways made public its hostile bid for Delta on Nov. 15.
It will give US Airways an opportunity to pitch its offer directly to the creditors.
“I assume they are going to explain their rationale for the plan and the synergies they suggest … and the hurdles they see and how they intend to deal with those hurdles,” Golden said.
No timetable has been put on when the creditors committee will make a decision on whether it will support the US Airways offer or Delta’s standalone plan, Golden said.
Delta still must file its formal reorganization plan, which it expects to do by next month.
Golden said the creditors will weigh the pros and cons of the offer against any other offers that may come in and the merits of Delta’s stand alone plan.
