Yeah, the guy is David Chessler out of Sarasota, Florida. He sometimes does deals with Greg Norman, but he may be doing this on his own.
He is providing the DIP financing, as you suspected. The sale is being fast-tracked, and that's one of the requirements in the terms of the DIP loan, so Chessler definitely has the inside track. Considering the period over which VEND has been marketed and the dismal results obtained, it's not surprising there's so little interest. You never know, other bidders may show up, but Chessler will be the stalking horse with a breakup fee, so he is very likely going to be the winning bidder, if not the only bidder. The sale will probably close by the end of March.
Chessler lent VEND enough money pre-petition to get them into the 11, he's advancing $500,000 in funds on the basis of interim bankruptcy court approval, and after final approval in a couple of weeks, he can advance up to a total of $2.535 million. He'll probably credit bid all of his loans and hope to pick VEND's assets up for little or nothing more than that. The creditors won't see much, and it will probably be a long while before they do.
I suppose he'll pick up Print Mates for what it's worth, which isn't much. As I said in my earlier post, the interesting question is whether he tries to force all the potential franchisees to come along for the ride. I bet he does, at least as far as the ones that ponied up funds and signed at the high end of the range for the kiosk purchase price.
