SLI Inc., Canton, Mass.-based lighting designer and manufacturer currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, has reached an agreement in principle with its secured lenders and a committee of its unsecured creditors.
The company said “a substantial portion” of its secured debt has been acquired by funds advised by DDJ Capital, a Wellesley, Mass., investment adviser. DDJ and two other investors now have acquired substantially all of the bankrupt company's secured debt and will sponsor a restructuring of SLI. The secured lenders will convert their debt into equity securities of SLI and the unsecured creditors will receive an agreed-upon cash payment and other considerations. The proposed restructuring is subject to approval of the United States Bankruptcy Court.
SLI, which has been in bankruptcy protection since Sept. 9, 2002, expects to file a formal plan of reorganization in the next 30 days and hopes to emerge from the bankruptcy proceedings by mid to late summer.
“The stable financial platform provided by this reorganization will benefit our customers, vendors and employees, and in our view, represents the best solution for all of those constituencies,” the company said in a statement. “We are extremely pleased with this result and look forward to continuing to provide quality lighting products, services and solutions for many years to come.”
SLI also withdrew a previous request to the bankruptcy court to sell its miniature and general lighting businesses.
SLI, which claims to be the world's largest supplier of miniature lighting products for automotive instrumentation, produces a complete range of incandescent, fluorescent, compact fluorescent, high intensity discharge, halogen, miniature incandescent, neon, LED and special lamps and lighting fixtures. It operates 35 plants in 11 countries.