Peter Pan Seafoods Co-Owner Rodger May and Silver Bay Seafoods, one of the company’s biggest business partners and fierce rivals, are dueling for control of the company’s assets after Peter Pan entered receivership in April 2024.
On 19 July, the Stapleton Group, Peter Pan’s court-appointed receiver, backed Sitka, Alaska, U.S.A.-based Silver Bay’s bid to acquire all of Peter Pan’s canned salmon inventory – nearly 750,000 cases of canned salmon – for USD 27.3 million (EUR 25.1 million), over a competing offer submitted by May. Silver Bay’s offer for the so-called Britestack assets also includes the assumption of USD 2.3 million (EUR 2.1 million) in liabilities, which includes taking over Peter Pan’s obligations to fulfill a U.S. Department of Agriculture contract that Peter Pan could not complete.
“[Peter Pan does] not have resources available to fully meet the obligations of the USDA prime contract, and a substantial factor in the valuation of the Britestack assets is [its] inability to fully satisfy that contract, indicating that their value would likely fall as the outstanding obligations under the USDA prime contract are met over time,” Stapleton Group said in a filing in King County [Washington] Superior Court. “Rather than allow the value of the Britestack Assets to deteriorate over time, [we] determined that it is in the best interests of the receivership estate to sell them separately from the receivership estate’s other assets.”
Bellevue, Washington, U.S.A.-headquartered Peter Pan still owes the USDA the bulk of the canned salmon it promised as part of a USD 17.2 million (EUR 15.8 million) contract it was awarded in March 2024. Due to operational limitations caused in large part by its lease of most of its Alaska assets to Silver Bay in April, Peter Pan is currently unable to fulfill the USDA contact on its own and would face additional costs if it made the attempt, making Silver Bay’s offer to assume its obligations a valuable part of the deal, according to the Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. Stapleton Group, which was appointed at the request of Wells Fargo, Peter Pan’s biggest creditor.
May has offered USD 31 million (EUR 28.6 million) for the Britestock assets, but with the Stapleton Group’s backing of Silver Bay’s offer, his bid is unlikely to succeed.
A date for a court hearing on Silver Bay’s offer has not yet been set, but a separate hearing on a revised offer from May to buy other Peter Pan assets is scheduled for 15 August.
In a 17 July filing, May offered USD 15 million (EUR 13.8 million) for Peter Pan’s warehouse in Seattle, Washington; its processing facility in Port Moller, Alaska; its King Cove, Alaska fuel business; the Peter Pan Fish and Ikura brand intellectual property; unspecified fishing quota; Northwest Fish Company; the company’s frozen inventory; and fishermen loans. The assets have been actively marketed by Hilco Corporate Finance, which, though hired by Peter Pan as its selling agent in January 2024, has not acted in the company’s best interest, according to May, who accused it of entering into sweetheart deals with Silver Bay as a result of its relationship with Kevin Bixler, Peter Pan’s former CEO, who joined Silver Bay in February 2024.
In his filing, May took issue with ...
