Enron Corp.’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy was approved Thursday morning by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York. Assuming the previously announced sales of Portland General Electric (PGE) and CrossCountry Energy are completed, Enron will no longer be U.S.-focused; creditors will receive a combination of cash and equity in Prisma Energy International, Enron’s worldwide natural gas pipeline and power generation business.

Prisma Energy, proposed as a spinoff by Enron a year ago, holds no U.S. assets, which had been Enron’s bread-and-butter business for many years (see Daily GPI, July 14, 2003). As an internationally focused company, Prisma Energy will hold Central American and Caribbean power projects in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and Puerto Rico; South American gas pipeline and power assets in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela; European power assets in Italy, Poland and Turkey; and Asia Pacific power, gas and liquid petroleum projects in China, Guam, India, the Philippines and South Korea.

“Undoubtedly, this was an extremely complex bankruptcy,” said Stephen F. Cooper, Enron’s acting CEO and chief restructuring officer. “Today’s court approval acknowledges not only the tremendous amount of work that has been accomplished during the last two and a half years, but also the overwhelming support of our economic constituents. We still have certain tax and change of control issues that need to be resolved before the effective date, but we will continue working diligently to address those issues so that we can begin initial distributions to our creditors as expeditiously as possible.”

Under the plan, and assuming the other units’ sales, the proportion of cash-to-equity for the 20,000-plus creditors is expected to be 92% cash and 8% equity. When the claims reconciliation process is completed, the allowable claims against the company are expected to be approximately $63 billion, Cooper said. The cash and equity assets available for ultimate distribution are expected to be around $12 billion, not including recoveries from litigation.

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