Mexico’s Interjet seeks $1.25bn debt restructuring

Interjet (AIJ, Toluca) has hired a Mexico City-based restructuring firm, Argoss Partners, to help it tackle a $1.25 billion debt pile and slim the company down ahead of a possible restart of flight operations, Bloomberg News’ Mexico bureau reported on May 4. In a restructuring plan which it aims to present to Mexico’s bankruptcy regulator for review later this month, the airline hopes to resolve issues with creditors through a pre-arranged commercial bankruptcy and obtain debtor-in-possession financing. “We want a pre-agreed process and to work on the main points with creditors,” Carlos Ortiz-Cañavate, a partner at Argoss, told the news agency, while another partner, Igor Marzo, said that a new-look Interjet was likely to be much smaller in terms of its fleet and network than before. Interjet, which suspended flight operations on December 11, can entertain the possibility of a resumption of operations only once it tackles problems ranging from unpaid taxes and back salaries to building back its fleet. According to the ch-aviation fleets advanced module, the carrier owns a fleet of twenty-one SSJ 100/95Bs, but many of these have been cannibalised for replacement parts. A new management team led by businessman Alejandro del Valle, who acquired a 90% stake in the carrier in early December, is still studying the company’s murky finances. According to Ortiz-Cañavate, del Valle had been aware that the airline was in debt when he bought it but had not been fully informed about the scale of the fiscal “mess”. At least three proposals for fiscal remediation have been submitted to Mexico’s tax authority (Servicio de Administración Tributaria – SAT), Ortiz-Cañavate said, but all have been rejected. A solution to the problem may be hard to find as the government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador continues to clamp down on corporate tax evasion. Last week, the Sixth District Court for Civil Matters in Mexico City admitted Interjet’s bankruptcy claim and ordered the suspension of any seizure of assets, following a series of debt claims in Mexico and the United States, local media reported. The judge also ordered that a copy of the airline’s claims be sent to the Federal Institute of Commercial Bankruptcy Specialists (Instituto Federal de Especialistas de Concursos Mercantiles – IFECOM) for it to designate a representative to the process.