Milbank has successfully represented the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of PG&E Corporation and its regulated utility subsidiary Pacific Gas and Electric Company (the “Utility”). As the largest utility in California, the Utility services approximately 16 million people throughout a 70,000-square-mile area through a massive transmission network comprised of 106,681 circuit miles of electric distribution lines, 18,466 circuit miles of interconnected transmission lines, 42,141 miles of natural gas distribution pipelines and 6,438 miles of transmission pipelines.
PG&E filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 29, 2019 in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California. PG&E’s chapter 11 cases were necessitated by the catastrophic and tragic wildfires that occurred in Northern California in 2017 and 2018, and PG&E’s potential liabilities arising therefrom, which the Debtors asserted could exceed $30 billion, without taking into account potential punitive damages, fines and penalties or damages with respect to future claims.
On June 20, 2020, the Court approved PG&E’s $59 billion reorganization plan, which involves issuing new debt and equity to help pay for $25.5 billion in wildfire-related claims. Unsecured creditors who were constituents of the committee represented by Milbank will be paid in full.
PG&E is expected to emerge from bankruptcy in Summer 2020.
The Milbank team was led by partners Dennis Dunne, Gregory Bray, Thomas Kreller (Financial Restructuring) and Andrew Leblanc (Litigation and Financial Restructuring) and included partners Alan Stone (Litigation) and William Bice (Project, Energy and Infrastructure Finance), special counsel Craig Price (Financial Restructuring) and Samir Vora (Litigation), and associates Matthew Koch (Financial Restructuring) and Erin Dexter (Litigation), among other Milbank attorneys.
