Charter nearing Chapter 11 filing?

Charter Communications in a few days will come to the end of its grace period for debt interest payments that it missed last month. It is not clear whether or not the more than $73 million in interest that's overdue will be paid by the grace period deadline of Feb. 15, but Moody's said Wednesday that it downgraded the cable TV company's debt in anticipation that Charter will have to file for bankruptcy protection regardless of whether or not it can make the payment.

Charter, whose chairman and controlling investor is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has been juggling its financial options since late last year, though the company still has continued to pursue DOCSIS 3.0 deployment plans, rolling out a 60 Mbps service in St. Louis just a couple of weeks ago.

For more:
- Barron's Blogs has this post [1]

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Charter inched closer to restructuring and possible bankruptcy last month [2]
Charter also was exploring its financial options last December [3]