Richards Layton Team Attains Substantial Settlement for Clients in Teleglobe v. BCE
August 18, 2010
Firm News| Corporate & Chancery Litigation| Bankruptcy & Corporate Restructuring
WILMINGTON, Delaware (August 18, 2010) – Richards, Layton & Finger announces that on August 12, the Delaware Bankruptcy Court approved a settlement between its clients, Teleglobe Communications Corp. and its affiliates, and BCE Inc. and certain officers and directors. In the settlement, BCE will pay Teleglobe $40 million and will waive over a half-billion dollars in claims against the Teleglobe bankruptcy estates. The Richards Layton directors who comprised the trial team for the case were Gregory V. Varallo, C. Malcolm Cochran IV and Russell C. Silberglied.
The case stemmed from Teleglobe’s 2002 Chapter 11 and CCAA filings in Delaware and Toronto, which followed BCE’s announcement that it would stop funding the multibillion-dollar undertaking by Teleglobe—a subsidiary of BCE at the time—to develop a fiber optic network. Teleglobe alleged that BCE, then Canada’s fourth-largest company, had breached an oral contract to fund the project or, alternatively, had breached its fiduciary duties in connection with its process for ending the funding.
Reached at a mediation in Toronto on April 7, 2010, the settlement ends five years of litigation.