Mirant

[Joe Stocks]

Evaluation Hearing, Day One, pt 1(From Yahoo)
by: shallow_explorer 04/18/05 10:53 pm
Msg: 56099 of 56341

Disclosure:
I own Mirant stock. Because of this, I have a natural bias in favor of the shareholders. While I will not purposely taint my notes in favor of the SH’s, I am a shareholder and preferred stock holder. I am not Mirant management (thank God) nor a senior bondholder. Also, for this first day, I was not in the courtroom on the first floor, but in the jury room on the 3rd floor listening telephonically. Actually, I had better seats (comfortwise), better view, better snacks -- but no visual aids. Use the following information at your own risk.

Day Summary:
10am Shareholders began mingling in preparation of press conference.
11am+ Press conference in the little park across from courthouse.
1pm begin hearing
Spent 45 minutes on pre-hearing arguments regarding debtors recent testimony
Spent 1.5 hours+ on debtors, creditors, MAGI opening remarks
Spent 1.5 hours- on shareholder’s committee and Phoenix opening remarks

My (Brief) Impressions of the Press Conference:
This was a good thing. There wasn’t an overabundance of shareholders, approximately 40. There wasn’t an overabundance of reporters, I met two and am guessing there wasn’t more than 3-4. That being said, approximately 6-7 shareholders articulated different aspects of our case and I think, as the recent articles suggest, word is starting to get out. Interesting aside – someone who represented themselves as one of the Southern company attorneys hung out at the back press conference. Always good to have a spy involved…

Pre-Valuation Hearing Arguments:
Debtors delivered 170 pages of documents to our attorneys on Saturday am. In these documents they offered testimony that basically eliminated the NOLs, changed the forward company multipliers and adjusted the Blackstone report pricing sensitivities. Lots of back and forth between lawyers saying “they’re not playing fair”, etc. Judge Lynn commented that he was not happy with the lawyers’ ability to work with each other. Also commented, as I mentioned previously, that debtors changing testimony at the last minute shoots themselves in the foot, and that they lose credibility with late changes.

Later in the same arguments, Judge Lynn commented that all the lawyers were very close to having to provide an essay on ethics. He said these essays couldn’t be prepared by the top gun’s minions (my wording) and that it would really make for a nice seminar. Additionally the Judge commented that it appeared that some of the lawyers hadn’t opened their ethics textbooks recently.

Our lawyers wanted the recent testimony excluded. Debtors attorney argued at least they had turned over the info, and that they were still waiting on info from the SH attorneys (this turns out to be confidential info that the SH attorneys don’t have access too, but why should the debtors attorneys muddle the discussions with facts.)

Results: split decision.
Judge said not new reports but updates to old reports okay.