Committee of lenders formed to help hibu

The restructuring process of hibu, the debt-laden media company formerly known as Yell Group, has taken another step forward with the formation of a co-ordinating committee of the group's lenders.

The committee comprises representatives from the following parties: Alcentra; GE Corporate Finance Bank; Gruss Asset Management; GSO Capital Partners; QP SFM Capital Holdings ; The Royal Bank of Scotland.

The co-ordinating committee is intended to represent and balance the interests of the lending syndicate. Its formation is a normal part of the process in any financial restructuring and allows for hibu's operating business to be unaffected, a statement from the struggling Yellow Pages publisher said.

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hibu, a company valued at £12.5m with more than £2bn of debt on the balance sheet, warned at the end of July that one of the options under consideration for reducing the debt mountain is a debt-for-equity swap that would see shareholders' stakes substantially diluted. With the share price down by almost nine-tenths over the last year and the stock's days as a £6-a-throw share a distant (2007) memory, it is doubtful whether many long-term holders care anymore.

Nevertheless, the news of the formation of the committee did perk up the shares, with the stock hitting 0.60p, up from 0.375p overnight, before ebbing back in the second hour of trading to 0.53p.

JH