Intelsat Class Action complaints underway
December 3, 2020
By Chris Forrester
A trio of complaints against how Intelsat handled the sale of shares prior to its entry into Chapter 11 bankruptcy reconstruction, and which is being heard in a California federal court, has seen the complaints consolidated.
The cases are said to involve “the same factual allegations, the same defendants, and the same legal claims,” and the suing investors “uniformly agree that the cases should be consolidated,” the US District Court for the Northern District of California said.
Investors filed three would-be class suits against BC Partners LLP and Silver Lake Group LLC, who “have long had significant control over” the Luxembourg-based satellite business.
The Intelsat securities class action lawsuit was commenced on April 7, 2020 in the Northern District of California and is captioned Hill v. Silver Lake Group, L.L.C., No. 20-cv-02341.
The case revolves around allegations of insider trading and that Intelsat gave non-public information to certain major shareholders.
A report in the New York Post in March contained allegations that that two important investors in Intelsat “partly escaped” the devastating collapse in Intelsat’s share price. The newspaper states that BC Partners and Silver Lake Partners, the two largest holders of Intelsat stock, “managed to sell a big chunk of Intelsat shares before the company’s hopes began to unravel”.