ONE MORE THING:WE MIGHT be in to a new year, but the Eircom debt restructuring continues to rumble on.

I’m told that this week the second lien lenders revised an earlier proposal relating to their €350 million debts.

The second lien are now prepared to write down €250 million of the debt in exchange for a €100 million debt instrument that would rank in line with the first lien lenders, who are firmly at the head of the queue to have their debts repaid.

The second lien have also offered to reduce their equity stake from 30 per cent to 4 or 5 per cent.

You can’t blame them for trying, but nobody involved in this tortuous process expects this proposal to get much of a hearing.

With Singapore-based shareholder STT now off the pitch and the employee Esot, which owns 35 per cent of the business, out in the cold, the company’s focus is on cutting some class of a deal with the first lien lenders, who are owed about €2.6 billion and put their own proposal on the table late last year.

All the signals are that this could continue for some months yet.