💥QVC: ‘C’ for Committee?💥
Updates: Axip Energy Services LP + Ultinon Motion Holding BV Files & TRM NRE Holding LLC Files.
On April 16, 2026, QVC Group Inc. (“QVCG,” a/k/a Qurate Retail Inc.) and 73 subsidiaries including QVC Inc. and Cornerstone Brands Inc. (“Cornerstone,” collectively with QVC Inc. and the other subsidiaries, the “company”) filed chapter 11 bankruptcy cases in the Southern District of Texas (Judge Perez), touting a (somewhat surprising) prepackaged plan that (i) rides through general unsecured creditors, (ii) contends with all kinds of inter-company complexity, (iii) deleverages the company’s robust balance sheet by billions of dollars, and (iv) glidepaths the company toward a quick value-maximizing emergence that sets the company up to invest in its digital/mobile/largely-TikTok-reliant future. You can read our initial coverage here 👇.
You’ll recall from that coverage that, in his introductory remarks at the first day hearing, debtors’ counsel, Joshua Sussberg of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, made a somewhat passing reference to preferred and common stockholders who, according to him, were mere victims of the bankruptcy code’s absolute priority rule. $5b of senior debt, he said, is getting exchanged into new debt and equity and, therefore, it stands to reason that equity would get a big fat 🍩. You can see how common shareholders felt about that:
But then there’s the roughly $1.27b of pref.
Note the dip to the bottom. That movement occurred immediately after the filing on April 17 and continued to the bottom on April 20 before rebounding. The prefs ended Friday higher than where they were on the petition date, 🤔.
Representing then-unnamed pref holders, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP’s Josh Brody emerged later in the hearing, dispensed with the it’s-a-pretty-prepack-”kumbaya” vibes, and raised a number of concerns on behalf of his clients. Check the footnotes in that previous coverage 👆: he previewed arguments to come related to corporate separateness and valuation; he also foreshadowed a potential filing seeking the appointment of a preferred equity committee.
And, so …
… on April 27, 2026, Cleary dropped this on the docket …
… on behalf of these guys …
… which was later joined by these guys …
… represented by these guys …
… which was later followed by this …
… by these guys (who are, notably, holders of common and prefs) …
… represented by these guys:
Here’s a live shot of Mr. Sussberg upon learning of the … count it …
ok …
okkkkk …
… different law firms vying to represent an equity committee …
You’ll recall that the crux of the preferred shareholders’ beef revolves around the debtors’ corporate structure and the fact that the prefs sit at the QVCG box — that’s the blue one up top 👇 — where there is no funded debt, a big pile of 💰, and a potentially valuable equity interest in Cornerstone.
In support of the proposed committee, Cleary writes:
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to PETITION to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.