Deloitte & Touche has reached a settlement with a committee representing bondholders of Parmalat, the Italian food company that went bankrupt nearly four years ago.
Deloitte was the auditor of Parmalat at the time it nearly collapsed in the wake of a scandal in which it misappropriated billions of dollars worth of investors’ money.
Under the proposed settlement, Deloitte will pay the bondholders up to 6 percent of the nominal value of their investments made before Nov 11, 2003. Yet the Big Four firm still denies any participation in or knowledge of the massive fraud, as does Dianthus SpA, an auditing firm that operated in Italy under the Deloitte & Touche name until July 2003.
The agreement is now being presented to the 32,000 Parmalat bondholders whom the committee represents, comprising about 70 percent of those who have filed damage actions against the company, Thomson Financial reported.
According to Thomson, the terms of the arrangement are similar to those made with 2,000 Parmalat bondholders represented by the Federconsumatori consumer group.