Italian Tile Maker Pitches Debt Haircut as Performance Slows (1)

A family-owned Italian ceramic-tile maker is asking its bank lenders to accept a steep writedown following a further decline in performance, after initially proposing a debt restructuring that avoided a haircut for creditors.

Panariagroup Industrie Ceramiche SpA is proposing that unsecured lenders write down more than half of their holdings in exchange for equity-like instruments, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. When debt talks starter earlier this year, the company had proposed an amendment and rescheduling of debt without writedowns.

That would already have been difficult to achieve given ...