I guess it all depends on what pre-petition means, shares issued before the BK filing or shares bought before the bankruptcy filing. I took it to mean bought. In my mind, that's the only one that makes sense. I mean if all shares are pre-petition (i.e. issued before BK), why add the term in the second POR vis-a-vis the first? The only reason that I can think of is that the debtors wanted to make sure equity supported their POR. Knowing that most of the shares were bought by speculators after the bankruptcy filing and that these shareholders would not approve the debtor's POR, the debtor's found a clever way to exclude them with the pre-petition qualifier. Moreover, since many of the pre-petition shares were in employee's 401-K plans, they knew they could count on their support. Presto, a majority pre-petition shareholders now support the POR.
Indeed, if any of you hold pre-petition shares, it makes them that much more valuable. For example, let's just say that only 10% of the existing shares were bought prior to the BK filing. Then 5% of shares in the new company are not divided up among 243M old company shares, but rather 24.3M old company shares. Thus the shares are not worth .27 each, but rather .27x10 = $2.70 each. The post-petition shares are worth nothing.
This is just my opinion. I could be wrong, but that's the way I read it. To me it's totally unfair, since they don't make that same distinction with the bond holders (pre vs post-petition). Too bad the EC didn't even bring up this point in the court hearing. If I were you, I'd press them to do it ASAP.
