Second bidder submits offer for bankrupt rail company
At least two bidders have submitted offers to purchase the bankrupt Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway, which is slated to be sold at auction next Tuesday. Today is the deadline for final bids to be submitted prior to the auction.
According to the Portland Press Herald, an unidentified company submitted an offer to buy the railway, which filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States and Canada last August following the July 6 train derailment and explosion in Lac Megantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
The newspaper reported that the railroad’s court-appointed trustee, Robert Keach, an attorney with Bernstein Shur in Portland, expects a flurry of other bids to be submitted by today’s 5 p.m. deadline.
In mid-December, a federal bankrupty judge approved the $14.25 million “stalking horse bid” submitted by Railroad Acquisitions Holdings LLC that set a minimum price for the railroad’s assets in the United States and Canada. At that time Keach had said as many as 20 companies had expressed an interest in the railroad, which operates on more than 500 miles of tracks in Quebec, Maine and a small section of Vermont. He said proceeds of the sale would be used to repay creditors and victims of the crash, supplementing a $25 million insurance policy for wrongful death, personal injury, property damage, fire suppression and environmental damage.
In Maine, the newspaper reported, the railroad still operates trains between Millinocket and Searsport and between Brownville and Montreal and its assets include a large railroad repair facility in Milo and a rail yard in Brownville Junction.
The winner of Tuesday’s auction won’t be made public until Thursday, the newspaper reported, when the U.S. District Court in Bangor and the Superior Court of Quebec in Sherbrook plan to hold simultaneous proceedings starting at 10 a.m.
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