New York-based architecture business data files for bankruptcy looking to offer belongings

(Reuters) – Architecture and design firm EYP Inc filed for personal bankruptcy on Sunday to offer its assets in the midst of litigation involving former shareholders and employees and immediately after decades of attempting to revamp its difficult debt obligations.

The Albany, New York-dependent corporation sought Chapter 11 defense in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court docket for the District of Delaware with $149 million in credit card debt. EYP has lined up a direct bid from personal equity company Ault Alliance Inc, its senior lender, to get its property for $67.7 million.

“EYP is a good prospect to use the protections that a Chapter 11 system delivers,” interim CEO Kefalari Mason claimed in a assertion.

EYP has places of work in 11 towns throughout the U.S. and projects in somewhere around 100 nations. Its customers incorporate public and non-public faculties, the federal governing administration and health-related centers, among other folks.

The company claimed that its business enterprise remained wholesome during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mason claimed in a created declaration that the company’s latest fiscal problems stems from complicated personal debt obligations owed to numerous groups of creditors and lawsuits introduced by former staff more than EYP’s prior financial debt transactions and restructuring endeavours.

Just one of the lawsuits accused a prior shareholder, Long Level Cash Inc, of duping workforce into promoting their equity in the corporation to an employee stock possession program in exchange for worthless notes. Although EYP itself is not a defendant in the scenario, it is on the hook for “significant” indemnification obligations to former administrators, who have been also defendants in the lawsuit, and Extended Stage.

The business has received tens of millions of dollars in indemnification demands, most of which it has not been capable to fork out mainly because it requires the money it has to continue on enterprise operations, Mason said in the declaration. Furthermore, EYP expended years hoping to restructure its financial debt without the need of filing for individual bankruptcy, to no avail.

In addition to its income and credit bid, Ault reported it will give to retain EYP’s 470 staff members and think the company’s actual estate leases and contracts with consultants and trade distributors, according to courtroom papers. Functions and do the job on tasks are predicted to carry on as a result of the sale procedure.

The circumstance is In re EYP Team Holdings Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 22-10367.

For EYP: Craig Martin, Aaron Applebaum, Richard Chesley and Oksana Koltko Rosaluk of DLA Piper

Our Specifications: The Thomson Reuters Have faith in Rules.