Tribune Company management’s bid to maintain control beyond a bankruptcy court deadline is being challenged by its various creditors, E&P reports, citing court filings. With Tribune management’s “exclusive control” under chairman and CEO Sam Zell set to expire at the end of this month, the company asked the bankruptcy court to grant it a four-month extension so it could come up with a reorg plan to emerge from Chapter 11 by the end of May. Senior creditors argue that as the year-anniversary of Tribune’s bankruptcy filing approaching, Zell and his team have had more than enough time to come up with program to structure the company.

Senior creditor JP Morgan told the court that all the lenders have enough information about how to move forward on restructuring the company. The banker pointed to 480,000 pages of Tribune documents that have been provided to the Law Debenture Trust Company of New York, the firm that is assisting Tribune’s junior creditors in its case against the publisher and senior lenders. The trust, which represents a group of smaller bondholders, allege that Zell’s takeover essentially left Tribune insolvent. They also charge that the senior lenders, including J.P. Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch, engaged in a leveraged buyout that they ought to have known would result a Chapter 11 filing.

The junior lenders have complained that Tribune’s preliminary reorg plan would leave them holding only a “sliver” of what they are owed and would benefit senior creditors unfairly.

On top of the battled between those two sides, a third group of lenders who are owed half of the $8.6 billion in debt that was used to takeover the company submitted a filing on behalf of their own reorg plan. This group proposed the establishment of a holding company, which would be administered by senior creditors. The proposed holding company would include various Tribune units, such as the Chicago Tribune flagship paper, the WGN-TV superstation and its other broadcast and print properties.

• Tribune Management Seeks Extension On Reorg Plan
• Tribune Bondholders Demand Court Examine Zell’s Buyout For Possible Fraud
• Report: Zell To Lose Control Of Tribune Under Reorganization Plan