TORONTO – Rogers Communications announced today that Rogers Cable and Rogers Wireless will become one on July 1st.
There is nothing in the release on how the restructuring will affect the people working in each company division.
RCI has sent notices "to the respective trustees of each of their public debt indentures, the agent of Cable’s bank credit facility and each of their various secured swap counterparties stating that, subject to certain conditions, all security provided by bonds issued under the Cable deed of trust and the Wireless deed of trust will be released on or about Thursday, June 28, 2007," says the press release sent just after the markets closed this afternoon.
"Upon release of the security under the deeds of trust, none of Cable’s and Wireless’ bank debt, public debt or swaps will remain secured by such bonds," reads the release.
"In addition, today Wireless issued a notice to redeem on June 21, 2007, all of the US$155 million principal amount of 9.75% senior secured debentures due 2016 at the redemption price plus accrued interest to the date of redemption. The redemption price will include a make whole premium based on the present values of the remaining scheduled payments."
This announcement is the initial step in a series of currently planned reorganization steps intended to culminate in the amalgamation of RCI with Cable and Wireless on or about July 1, 2007.
The amalgamated entity will continue as RCI. Cable and Wireless will no longer be separate corporate entities and will cease to be reporting issuers, says the release. This planned intra-company amalgamation of the parent and subsidiary entities does not impact the consolidated results previously reported by RCI.
"Upon completion of the planned amalgamation, RCI will assume all of the rights and obligations under all of the then outstanding Cable and Wireless public debt indentures and swaps," reads the statement.
"RCI is pursuing this planned amalgamation principally to simplify its corporate structure while streamlining many of the related reporting and compliance obligations."
RCI intends to cancel the currently outstanding $1 billion Cable bank credit facility, the $700 million Wireless bank credit facility and the $600 million bank credit facility of RCI’s wholly owned subsidiary, Rogers Media Inc., and replace them with a new unsecured bank credit facility of similar aggregate size at RCI that is currently being arranged.
Upon amalgamation, the outstanding Cable and Wireless public debt and respective swaps, as well as the planned RCI bank credit facility, will all be unsecured.
