Pfizer Contributes Assets to Pay Asbestos Claims

Pfizer Inc. will contribute assets to help its bankrupt, nonoperating Quigley unit pay asbestos claims. Quigley, acquired by Pfizer in 1968, made three products for the steel industry from the 1940s to the 1970s that included asbestos.

Pfizer still maintains that it never made or sold any Quigley products, but some claimants haven’t released the world’s largest drug manufacturer from alleged “derivative liability.” Included in the assets Pfizer will contribute is a 281,581-square- foot building leased to a brewery. The lease will produce net income of $1.9 million for the first year of the lease, with the amount increasing over time, court papers said. The location of the building and the name of the brewery were not specified.

Quigley filed a sixth outline of a plan to reorganize that requires Pfizer to forgive a secured claim of $86 million, a bankruptcy loan of $12.6 million, and unsecured clams of $33 million. Asbestos claims against Quigley may total $4.45 billion during the next 42 years. Pfizer will also contribute $264.9 million in cash and all of the stock in the reorganized Quigley into a trust designed to pay for asbestos claims.

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