Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Following our story ‘BroadSign Files For Chapter 11 Protection‘ which seems like aeons ago it’s worth us giving you all a quick update based on what we’ve heard together with reading through the court (for the umpteenth time) and new investment documents.
As part of the Chapter 11 it’s standard practise for the court to make sure that an investment banker is appointed in order for them to try and sell the business. The court after all has a duty to find the highest bidder.
BroadSign hired a Chief Restructuring Officer and appointed SSG as the investment banker – a chap by the name of Scott Victor is the lead handling the whole process.
People shouldn’t be shocked by the fact that current CEO Brian Dusho is absent from much of this process – he has to be one step removed to prevent any potential conflict of interest BUT if real offers are made then he will step in and lead the presentation and next steps.
From what we can work out the minimum bid is USD 5.7 million in cash, which is what Jedfam (the default ‘buyer’) is owed. Jedfam is of course Burr Smith (or at least Burr Smith’s investment arm).
To eliminate people playing silly-buggers SSG require a 10% down payment on any bids and all bids are binding and (we think) no due diligence is allowed.
The whole process has to be complete 60 days from the date of the first offer (that was Jedfam and was made the same day that Chapter 11 began so the clock is already ticking).
The industry as a whole has been, like us, quite positive about the whole situation. There have been some ‘cheap shots’ but having said that, we liked particularly what Ken Goldberg said in a recent blog post “Our company competes vigorously with BroadSign, but I have respect for them and think that Brian Dusho has done a remarkable job given the cards he was dealt upon assuming his current role… This may be heresy to some, but I hope that the planned sale and recap works out for them”
Whilst this has been going on, BroadSign has continued to run its business as normal – Anthony Davis (who we met at the #dse2012 #dsemixer) was appointed as NA Sales Director and there are a number of new network wins that we have heard about – one in Europe and in NA that have not been announced yet.
We’d bet an awful lot of money that Burr Smith will end up with the company and BroadSign will go from strength to strength in 2012 once all this is behind them. BroadSign is of course a major sponsor of #ScreenmediaExpo and we expect to catch up with them in May in London.
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