Posted on 09/10/2003 11:42:22 PM PDT by Pro-Bush
EchoStar complains about Loral to bankruptcy court
NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Satellite television service EchoStar Communications Corp. (NasdaqNM:DISH - News) on Wednesday accused bankrupt satellite maker Loral Space and Communications Ltd. (OTC BB:LRLSQ.OB - News) of withholding information EchoStar needs to decide whether to make an offer to buy the company.
EchoStar, which operates the No. 2 U.S. satellite TV service Dish Network, said in a filing with bankruptcy court that Loral was not letting it see "certain due diligence information" for certain assets and refused to let it see any information on parts of the company.
"EchoStar is left with no choice but to seek this court's intervention to rehabilitate the sale process that (Loral has) impeded at virtually every turn," the document read.
The complaints came as Loral prepares to receive bids by Oct. 15 for an auction of its assets.
Loral filed for bankruptcy in July. It has already agreed to sell six North American satellites for about $1 billion to another operator, Intelsat, but bankruptcy rules require Loral to consider other bids.
EchoStar said last month it could be interested in buying the entire company, including Loral's satellite-making business and other satellites in operation, for $1.45 billion.
EchoStar said Loral described its bid for the entire company as "woefully inadequate" and said Loral's Chief Executive said the company was not for sale.
Loral declined to comment.
EchoStar asked the court to extend the deadline for bidding for the Loral auction to 58 days from the day the court grants its request, and to require Loral to provide as much information as EchoStar needs.
It also argued in the filing that Loral, which has already made it clear that Intelsat is its preferred bidder, has put far fewer restrictions on Intelsat's examination of the documents related to the assets.
EchoStar said Loral removed documents from the data room where potential suitors examine company papers before making an offer, moved the data room to a new location and threatened to cancel the process.
Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern district of New York set a hearing for 2.30 P.M on Friday to hear EchoStar's complaints.
Murdock is not involved. Charlie Ergen is the bigwig at Echostar. He is a very smart warrior in these types of battles. Echostar was supposed to merge with the sky family of companies (murdocks bunch) but murdock broke the deal. Ergen got a huge settlement from it (hundreds of millions IIRC).
I expect that Echostar will either own Loral, the majority of its satelites, or recieve a huge cash settlement as a result of this. Charile doesn't lose often
Prior to that Murdock tried to buy part of echostar and renegged. Haven't found the costs yet but I remember that Charlie Ergen made out like a bandit for breach of contract by murdock.
I webt to the Dish website and there was no 909 model listed.
What you describe sounds like the 710(?).
HDTV is useless without an HDTV TV set. The 100 of recording time, compared to my existing 35 sounds great though. As does the dual tuner.
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