Business News
ABITIBIBOWATER PROVIDES UPDATE ON FILING OF ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K AND RELATED MATTERS
Thursday 26. March 2009 - AbitibiBowater Inc. (the "Company") announced today that on March 18, 2009, it received a written notice from the NYSE Regulation, Inc. (the "NYSE") stating that the Company is not in compliance with the NYSE's continuing listing criteria because it failed to timely file its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2008.
The Company required additional time to finalize its accounting for certain transactions, to complete its accounting analysis, primarily related to goodwill impairment and long-lived asset impairment, and to more accurately reflect the outcome of a significant pending debt refinancing in its Form 10-K.
The Company is working to finalize its accounting for certain transactions and the related accounting analysis as described above, in connection with the finalization of its consolidated financial statements and related disclosures in the Form 10-K as expeditiously as possible and expects to file the Form 10-K very shortly.
As a result of the delay in filing the Form 10-K, the Company will be unable to use its previously filed registration statements on Form S-3 for a period of at least 12 months from the date the Form 10-K is filed. This means, among other things, that the Company will be unable to deliver freely tradable common shares to holders of the exchangeable shares of AbitibiBowater Canada Inc. upon exercise of their exchange rights until the Company has filed a new registration statement on Form S-1 with respect to such shares and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has declared the registration statement effective. The Company currently intends to file a new registration statement on Form S-1 in the near future; however, the holders of exchangeable shares may experience a delay in receiving freely tradable common shares deliverable upon exchange of the exchangeable shares until the SEC declares such registration statement effective.
For the period of time during which exchangeable shareholders will not be able to exchange their exchangeable shares for freely tradable shares of the common stock of AbitibiBowater, the holders of the exchangeable shares may have difficulty in disposing of their shares on the TSX as the volume of exchangeable shares traded on the TSX is generally substantially lower than the volume of shares of common stock of AbitibiBowater traded on the NYSE and the TSX, and there can be no assurance that holders of exchangeable shares will be able to sell their shares at an equivalent price on the TSX as they would otherwise be able to sell shares of common stock of AbitibiBowater had they been able to exchange their exchangeable shares for freely tradable AbitibiBowater common shares on either the NYSE or the TSX.