Seadrill comes out of the bankruptcy proceedings

OSLO (Reuters) – Seadrill, the specialist Norwegian drilling for oil at sea, announced on Monday the successful completion of its restructuring and be out of the procedure by u.s. bankruptcy in which it was placed in September.

To reduce its debt burden, inflated by numerous acquisitions of platforms before the downturn of the oil market in 2014, Seadrill has obtained from its banks a deferral of the repayment schedule for a total of $ 5.7 billion (4.9 billion euros) of loans, and has converted into equity approximately $ 2.4 billion of unsecured bonds and a billion dollars of bonds for platforms recently built.

He also completed a fund raising of more than a billion dollars.

“We are pleased to emerge from chapter 11 (us bankruptcy code) and to move forward with a solid foundation on the financial plan on which we will continue to grow and develop our business,” said John Fredriksen, who remains the main shareholder and the chairman of the group, was quoted in a press release.

Seadrill comes out of this procedure with approximately $ 2.1 billion of cash and $ 2.3 billion of orders to be fulfilled. The first due date of refund claim is not before 2022.

It plans to retain a dual listing in Oslo and New York.

(Nerijus Adomaitis; Bertrand Boucey for the French service) OLFRBUS Reuters France Online Report Business News 20180702T205347+0000