Editor:
On behalf of WillowRun L.P., I would like to respond to your Sept. 16 article, “Editor who got free stake in PCS carrier promotes that firm.” The article nicely illuminates part of PCS 2000’s background. However, several statements about WillowRun should be corrected.
The following quotes the article and for convenience is numbered.
(1) Some individual investors in PCS 2000 became WillowRun L.P., (2) which currently has petitions to deny several PCS licenses pending at the commission; (3) that group reportedly has an aggregate investment in PCS 2000 of more than $300,000, (4) and it wants to sell its shares back at a premium, an idea PCS 2000 refuses to entertain.
By way of
1. WillowRun is not composed of individual investors in PCS 2000 who subsequently came together to form a partnership. Rather, WillowRun is family-owned. WillowRun’s PCS 2000 units initially were purchased by an affiliated family trust and then transferred to WillowRun.
2. WillowRun has filed one petition to deny (opposing PCS 2000’s applications for 15 PCS licenses). WillowRun has not opposed other license applications.
3. WillowRun does indeed have an investment in PCS 2000 of more than $300,000 although, as noted above, this is not an “aggregate” of individual investments.
4. WillowRun does not want to sell its shares back to PCS 2000. WillowRun does not have any settlement offer outstanding and does not anticipate making one. WillowRun wants the FCC to reject the license applications of PCS 2000, and the partnership to rescind its offering and make whole the limited partners by paying their principal and any reasonable costs and expenses.
In a Sept. 18 telephone conversation, Debra Wayne said that she had obtained her information about WillowRun from the record in the FCC proceeding. In this proceeding, PCS 2000 accused WillowRun of acting against the interests of the other limited partners by demanding to be bought out at a premium and seeking payment in advance of the deadline for filing petitions to deny. However, PCS 2000 did not disclose that PCS 2000 had in fact solicited the very buy-out offer that it was complaining about to the FCC. WillowRun believes that PCS 2000 made this solicitation in bad faith because the date that PCS 2000 approached WillowRun was (1) shortly before the deadline for filing a petition to deny, (2) immediately after WillowRun had demanded to inspect the books and records of the partnership (but not to be bought out) and (3) after PCS 2000 had reneged on a deal to buy-out WillowRun at par. PCS 2000 also did not disclose that WillowRun had insisted on being bought out by general partner insiders and therefore was not acting against the interest of the other limited partners.
Thank you for your attention to this. All in all, I have very much enjoyed RCR’s coverage of PCS 2000 because it conveys the Alice-in-Wonderland nature of the situation.
Julian P. Gehman
Mayer, Brown & Platt
Washington, D.C.
