GLENSHAW GLASS FACING DEADLINE
Published: Thursday, March 10, 2005
By Michael Yeomans
Pittsburgh Tribune Review
Attorneys for PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and a management company it hired to sell remaining inventory at the Glenshaw Glass Co. plant in Shaler have until Monday to hammer out an agreement with unsecured creditors that would keep it out of bankruptcy.
U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge M. Bruce McCullough said at a hearing Wednesday that he will be inclined to grant the unsecured creditors’ petition to move jurisdiction of the plant from the state court-approved receivership initiated in November by PNC to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
“My job is to protect the unsecured creditors, not the secured creditors,” McCullough said.
Margaret Good, president of Pittsburgh-based Meridian
Group, said yesterday that it remains unlikely a deal can be reached with any group that would re-start the plant. But she said there are still three interested parties who may make an offer, including what she called a “strategic buyer” in the glass industry based in Europe whose representatives toured the plant Friday.
PNC, Glenshaw Glass’s primary secured creditor, took control of the plant in November from its former owner, John Ghaznavi, and hired Meridian
Group as the court-approved receiver to liquidate the inventory and entertain offers to buy the struggling plant, which was severely damaged by flooding in September.
Three weeks into the receivership, Meridian stopped production after the plant’s largest union refused to agree to temporary concessions.
Unsecured creditors complained they have been kept out of the loop since then by PNC and Meridian.
Fred Greenburg, attorney for the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics & Allied Workers International Union, which represents about 300 former hourly workers at the plant, complained that neither PNC nor Meridian had shared any financial information regarding the plant until Monday.
Greenburg has filed a $5.3 million unsecured claim on behalf of the workers, including rougly $2.1 million in severance pay, $1.6 million in wages, $1 million in health and welfare insurance and $500,000 in vacation pay, all due under contract.
“There is prospect for recovery, and my clients are likely to be in the first layer of unsecured claims,” Greenburg said. “We would be ahead of the other unsecured creditors.”
David Rudov, attorney for the other unsecured creditors, said PNC’s only interest is to consume as much of the remaining value of Glenshaw Glass as possible and then “bring the carcass back to bankruptcy court and let the remaining parties fend for themselves.”
Stanley Levine, attorney for Meridian, argued that while the plant’s furnaces and its sorting and packaging machinery, and the real estate, would be best disposed of in bankruptcy court, the plant should continue in the receivership for another two-to-three months.
“We’re trying to sustain the momentum of the past three months,” Levine said, during which time about $5.1 million of $5.4 million of the plant's receivables have been collected and $7 million of $11 million of remaining inventory has been sold.
He said the amount owed to PNC has been reduced to $4.5 million from $11.5 million.
myeomans@tribweb.com
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