[ Manila StandardToday.com ] 
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Creditors of beleaguered Intercontinental Broadcasting Corp., the sequestered broadcasting company that operates Channel 13 on free television, have no option but to agree on a court-lead rehabilitation program.
IBC-13’s creditors, mostly comprising of suppliers, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and its 280-strong employees with unpaid million pesos worth of benefits, posed little objection to management’s decision to file a petition for corporate rehabilitation with a Quezon City court early this month.
“The labor union and creditors supported the move. They have little options. It’s a choice between bankruptcy and shutting down the operations or the rehabilitation program,” an IBC-13 insider said.
The broadcasting company, it turned out, had piled a huge debt, including unpaid benefits to workers and corporate taxes, because of the network’s poor liquidity condition.
IBC-13 has sought permission from the court to suspend debt payments, including over
P1 billion already due as of Oct. 31 this year. The insider said the company immediately needed cash advances to upgrade its aging technical facilities and retire most, if not all, of its employees to stop the hemorrhaging.
The immediate financial assistance, of course, will depend on the new investor interested on betting his fortunes on IBC-13.
Rehab expert
IBC-13’s fate will hinge on former Danilo Concepcion, the former commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission and currently the court-appointed liquidator of National Steel Corp. Concepcion drafted IBC’s rehabilitation program now pending with the Quezon City court.
The plan calls for an upgrade of transmitters to improve signal and revive all radio and TV stations, a complete programming overhaul and a better sales and marketing complement to generate more advertising revenues. The broadcasting company also offered to reduce its staff through retrenchment and retirement to trim overhead costs.
IBC-13 is seriously considering the retirement of all employees to start afresh and run a leaner organization.
“Rehabilitation plan is developed with assumptions of a modest financial recovery over the next five to 10 years,” the corporate rehabilitation plan said.
The network needs new investments of P750 million in the first year to produce programs, upgrade facilities and pay its outstanding obligations and P220 million in the second to fourth year to rehabilitate technical facilities.
IBC said it was in search of an investor or a joint venture partner to finance the rehabilitation efforts.
Selling IBC-13 should pose no problem because of its prized asset—a four-hectare land just across the posh Capitol Hills Golf Subdivision inside Ayala Heights in Quezon City. The insider claimed that the land was free of legal encumbrances and that IBC-13 could dispose more than half of the property to big developers.
Former general manager Jose Jalandoon, however, filed a court case claiming 20-percent ownership of IBC-13. The insider said the executive had already softened up on his position and was open to a compromise to stop the company’s bleeding.
The valuation of IBC-13’s Capitol Hills’ property is expected to increase because of an ongoing road construction in the area that will link C-5 to Luzon Avenue and all the way to the North Luzon Expressway.
E-mail: rayenano@yahoo.com; business@manilastandardtoday.com
