Other qualified bidders attending the Tuesday [image-nocss] auction included H.A. Mapes Inc., Mac's Convenience Stores LLC and TD Bank, the newspaper said. Two other qualified bidders, Tedeschi Food Shops Inc. and MWC Acquisition Co. LLC, did not attend the auction, it added.
Tewksbury, Mass.-based Energy Northwhich, according to its website, operates 10 Fresh Express Convenience Store & Deli locations in Massachusetts and New Hampshireis now poised to acquire M.W. Sewall's 11 Clipper Mart stores, the stores' inventories, wholesale accounts, an apartment building and several residential properties, said the report.
Tuesday's auction came two weeks after heir Edward "Ned" Sewall III submitted the highest acceptable bid for the company's home heating oil operations, the Times Record also reported.
The 123-year-old Bath, Maine, firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2009, said the report. (Click here for previous CSP Daily News coverage.)
By late October 2009, the court had appointed Mark Stickney as trustee to run the company while it reorganized. In early February of this year, Stickney fired Philip Sewall, who had taken over as president following Ned Sewall's departure.
While preparing for the sale, Stickney had to contend with internal drama. A judge granted a temporary restraining order barring Philip Sewall from a variety of business actions after Stickney accused him of "mismanagement and self-dealing" and using proprietary information to establish a competing business. Stickney alleged that Sewall was "misappropriating the [company's] property, including confidential information, proprietary information and trade secrets, and soliciting...employees to switch their affiliations from the [company] to Mr. Sewall's proposed new enterprise 'Sewall Energy'." (Click here for previous CSP Daily News coverage.)
In the days leading up to an April 6 auction of M.W. Sewall's heating oil division, Ned Sewall put together a purchase proposal of nearly $4.76 million, a total that included $2.69 million in money and assets the company still owed him from the 2007 buyout. That proposal held up as the top offer during the auction, besting offers made by a field of bidders that included Downeast Energy Corp., the report said.
Ned Sewall's 2007 buyout consisted of $4.5 million in cash and stock, according to court documents cited by the paper. After an April 9 court hearing on the heating oil auction, Federal Bankruptcy Court Judge James B. Haines Jr. approved a motion to sell that portion of the company to Ned Sewall, said the report.
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