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Optimum Communications, fka Altice USA, is sending a message to all of the lenders of its newest $2bn credit facility: JP Morgan, as the sole lender, can under no circumstance, enter into a cooperation agreement with… itself?

On 25 November, the company announced that it had secured $2bn in new unsub term loans commitments implemented through an unsub credit agreement. On the same day, the company announced litigation against its existing lenders for forming a cooperation agreement in violation of antitrust law (discussed here).

In its newest unsub credit agreement, Optimum included “anti co-op” language. The kicker, however, is that a look at the credit agreement shows the entire loan was from one lender — JP Morgan Chase Funding.

JPMCF, a subsidiary on the investment banking side of the larger firm, is not part of the broader Altice USA cooperation agreement. It is already one of the banks providing the revolving credit facility which was primed by this new loan with respect to the assets at the unsubs. This in essence was a self-help deal by JPMCF to ensure that no one else did the priming deal to jeopardize the revolver. Most important, it is separate and apart from JP Morgan Asset Management, which is part of the existing co-op (and named in the antitrust lawsuit). Both claim the ultimate parent JP Morgan Chase & Co.

Additionally, the anti co-op language was only included in Optimum’s unsub credit agreement, but not the fourteenth amendment to the previous existing credit agreement, which was announced in the same 8-K. The existing credit agreement was amended in order to allow for the paydown of the restrictive B-6 term loan and to un-restrict the subsidiaries with the assets that are now being primed by the new loan.