The former owners of Groupe Juste pour rire (JPR) are not leaving empty-handed. By agreeing to lend $2.5 million to the comedy specialist, they should be able to recover a larger portion of their receivables, which would otherwise have probably evaporated.
This interim financing provided by Groupe CH, Bell and Christopher Silbermann, a senior executive at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), will allow JPR to have the time and funds necessary to complete the sale of its head office – located on Boulevard Saint -Laurent – who was not part of the transaction concluded with ComediHa!.
The group based in Quebec essentially got its hands on JPR content and other activities, such as the Montreal festival, its English-speaking section in Toronto and the small Zoofest festival.
“The [interim] financing will cover the costs of restructuring and preserving the building,” wrote trustee Christian Bourque of PwC in his most recent report. “The conclusion of the sale of the building should […] allow for a distribution to unsecured creditors.”
A sale of the head office is a sine qua non condition to achieve this objective.
Like the National Bank, the Cultural Business Development Corporation (SODEC) and the Business Development Bank of Canada, Bell (26% of shares), Groupe CH (25%) and CCA (49%) should be able to recover their secured claims.
Various entities of the telecommunications conglomerate and CH Group (evenko and Spectra), however, appear on JPR’s list of unsecured creditors – those who are not certain of recovering all outstanding sums. They are deprived of about 2 million, according to our calculations.
This is why they agreed to an emergency loan of 2.5 million.
“The National Bank is not prepared […] to provide additional financing,” Mr. Bourque emphasizes. “SODEC is a term lender and is not prepared to provide financing of this nature.”
In other words, there was no rush to finance what was left of JPR. The emergency loan from the three former shareholders of the humor specialist comes with “[monthly] monitoring fees of $10,000” and bears interest at an annual rate of 15%.
In addition, the claims process for creditors will begin next Tuesday. They will have until mid-August to submit a request using a form. We still do not know the amount that will be redistributed.
Only three of the qualified groups submitted bids. According to our information, ComediHa! offered around 25 million to win the bet. Since the transaction was finalized on June 7, almost all of JPR’s employees have been laid off.
When it protected itself from its creditors, the Just for Laughs Group had debts of around 50 million. Its fall risks costing its founder, Gilbert Rozon, up to 17 million. This is the balance of the sale price that occurred in 2018, an amount considered to be an unsecured debt.
The businessman turned to the courts in the hope of getting paid.