PG&E Shareholders May Survive Bankruptcy If Past Is Prologue

PG&E Corp. shareholders are likely to make it through bankruptcy without getting wiped out if the company still wants to be able to raise money in the future.

The company didn’t liquidate its shareholders, and it repaid its creditors in full, when its Pacific Gas & Electric utility unit filed for bankruptcy in April 2001, according to Kit Konolige, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. That’s unlike a typical bankruptcy in which equity holders see their stake vanish, he said.

PG&E is likely to preserve some value for stockholders again, because it has a monopoly in its California markets, and because ...