Orion bondholders pick leading man for restructuring talks.

Orion bondholders pick leading man for restructuring talks

Hoping to help create a happy ending at troubled Orion Pictures Corp. is Ken Klee, the partner at Los Angeles-based law firm Stutman, Treister & Glatt who was hired last week by Orion bondholders to represent them in negotiations with the movie-maker.

New York-based Orion, which reported losses of $63 million on revenues of $584.2 million in fiscal 1990, wants bondholders to give back their $285 million of IOUs for new, non-interest-bearing convertible bonds.

But Klee says bondholders refuse to be silent lambs led to dancing with wolves. "The bondholders hope to participate constructively in Orion's restructuring," said Klee, 42, last week. "It is premature to discuss the issue further, as the bondholders committee is still being formed."

Leading the bondholders are the Chicago-based Kemper Financial Services (parent of local brokerage Bateman Eichler, Hill Richards) and Los Angeles-based Executive Life Insurance Co. (in conservatorship).

Klee, with Stutman, Treister since 1980, actually wrote part of the nation's bankruptcy laws in 1978, when he helped draft the Bankruptcy Reform Act for the House Judiciary Committee.

Since joining Stutman, Treister, Klee has become one of the country's leading attorneys at representing creditors in bankruptcies, reorganizations and insolvencies, and he has worked for IOU-holders in such major cases as Eastern Airlines and (Merv) Griffin Resorts International.

"I have been working exclusively for creditors since 1987," said Klee. "It's a side of the law I really enjoy."

Orion's restructuring plan is being put together by Ken Moelis, investment banker in the Century City offices of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, which has been retained by the moviemaker.