Bad news is making Tony Lomas busy. A partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers' business recovery services group, he's deep in complex and tense negotiations, acting as administrator for Enron Europe and as an adviser to bank creditors of NTL.
Lomas is not entirely comfortable with the high profile such work brings. Meeting Euromoney on the day when details of NTL's supposed resolution of its debt restructuring through an equity swap with bondholders is headline news, he quietly points out that no agreement has yet been reached between NTL and its banks. The banks can claim security on many of the cable companies' operating assets. It seems that this particular poker game may have a few rounds yet to play. But Lomas refuses to discuss who might hold the strongest cards and who walk away with empty pockets.
This is a man with a lot of good stories that, annoyingly, he won't tell.