A bit more from the lawyer, Thomas Lauria, who is challenging the Chrysler deal. From an interview with Susie Gharib,
Bankruptcy Attorney Thomas Lauria Reviews The Chrysler/Fiat Case
.................."GHARIB: I'm fine, thank you. Let me begin by asking you that if you do make an argument before the Supreme Court, what's the case that you're going to make on behalf of your Indiana investors?
LAURIA: Well, there are really two issues. The first one is that the executive branch of the government has no statutory or constitutional authority to take over and run a car company as it's done with Chrysler. The second argument is that the scheme that the government put together with the company and some of the other stakeholders is really a sham transaction that was designed to upend the priority scheme under the bankruptcy code and to deprive my clients of their contractual rights.
GHARIB: So you're saying on the first point, you're saying that the government didn't even have a right to give those bailout funds to Chrysler. That's number one. Number two is, what's the take away money or restructuring part of the deal, right?
LAURIA: Correct.
GHARIB: All right. So then what's the end game here? What do you want to happen?
LAURIA: Well, we want to see Chrysler be reorganized in a way that complies with the law. I think it's actually pretty easy to do. Rather than try to characterize this as a liquidation of Chrysler for $2 billion which gets paid to the secured lenders and then giving the $20 billion going concern value of the company to junior creditors, what you should do is sell the assets for the full price, $22 billion and then let the creditors share that $22 billion which is cash, debt and equity according to their contractual rights and the priority under the bankruptcy code.
GHARIB: But time is running out here and if the deal between Chrysler and Fiat doesn't go through and Chrysler is forced to just liquidate, my understanding is that the value of the company, the break up value of Chrysler is under a billion dollars.
LAURIA: Well in fact there's no competent evidence in the record what the liquidation value of Chrysler is. The expert who testified in front of the bankruptcy court below left out critical assets from his valuation analysis. He used multiples that were well under market and most interesting to me, he was going to get a $10 million success fee if the deal went through which really raises a question as to whether or not his testimony was biased. ",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Lauria continues on in the interview to dismiss the June 15 deadline. Basically, Fiat won't walk away from this deal. Why would they when they've been promised 20$ of the company with nothing down?