April 10, 2002, 3:08 PM — The names of more than 50 potential bidders for bankrupt telecommunications service provider Global Crossing Holdings Ltd. inadvertently emerged when someone from the carrier's law firm sent a mass e-mail to the confidential list of bidders with all the recipients visible in the address line, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The list included other large telecommunications companies, financial institutions and media companies, according to the Times. The potential bidders listed in the report include Verizon Communications Inc., Deutsche Telekom SA, Credit Suisse First Boston Corp., Bank One Corp., the Quadrangle Group LLC, and Bertelsmann AG.
E-mail addresses of company representatives were listed in the address header of an e-mail sent in March from the Bermuda telecom company's New York lawyers at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. The companies had signed a confidentiality agreement in order to review the company's assets for a potential bid, the Times reported.
A Global Crossing spokeswoman said the company has no comment on the subject. Weil, Gotshal & Manges did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Two bidders, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. of Hong Kong and Singapore Technologies Telemedia Pte Ltd., made a public bid of US$750 million for the service provider. Global Crossing listed US$12 billion in assets and $22 billion in liabilities in its bankruptcy filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Creditors are fighting the bid in hopes of seeing a higher figure emerge for the company, whether sold whole or in pieces.
Global Crossing said in a Tuesday court filing that it would decrease the goodwill value of the assets on its books by $8 billion to reflect lower market value. The company will take the writedown against its fourth-quarter results. Earlier in April the company said it would delay issuing its annual financial report, which would reflect the writedown, because of continuing investigations by state and federal authorities into the company's accounting practices.
