The perfect April Fools prank would have been for A123 Systems to put out a fake press release saying the company had changed its name to B456 Systems. On Thursday, March 28, not April 1, an SEC filing from B456 Systems said that "On March 22, 2013, A123 Systems, Inc. filed a Certificate of Amendment to the Company’s Restated Certificate of Incorporation, as amended to change its name from A123 Systems, Inc. to B456 Systems, Inc." Cue the stream of articles saying that, seriously, for real, honest injun, we're not lying, that A123 Systems had changed its name to, honestly, for real, B456 Systems. Following that, the new A123 Systems wrote, on Friday, a blog post explaining it wasn't changing its name.
The reality is that there were two companies named A123 Systems. The old one, A123 Systems, Inc., was the carcass of the old A123 Systems that had gone bankrupt, and sold its assets to The Wanxiang Group. The new one, A123 Systems, LLC, was the Wanxiang Group subsidiary that was operating the assets formerly owned by A123 Systems, Inc. Two companies, almost the same name. Confused?
Apparently a lot of journalists watching the field got confused by A123 Systems changing its name.
On Friday, A123 Systems LLC issued a blog post explaining that it was "the old A123" that changed its name to B456 Systems. The blog post wryly noted, "This change was ironically made to reduce confusion about the difference between the A123 businesses which are now operating successfully under Wanxiang's ownership and those elements of the company still in the bankruptcy process."
What's going on is that when a company goes bankrupt, but resurrects itself during the bankruptcy process, often there is a remnant of the old company that still holds the debt obligations of the old company. The old company will still have a corporate existence, and have a few employees whose job is to wind down the debts and assets of the old company. To reduce confusion the remnant company will change its name to something else.
For example, when General Motors went bankrupt there were several corporate entities involved with transitioning the assets from the old General Motors to the new one, and those entities changed their names at different moments of the process. The "new GM" used the Vehicle Acquisition Holdings LLC as a means for purchasing assets from the "old GM". Another entity, NGMCO, Inc., was the actual "New GM" and eventually renamed itself to "General Motors Corporation" after purchasing assets and trademarks from the "old GM," who renamed itself to Motors Liquidation Company.
Nothing to be worried about, the management of the new A123 Systems didn't get a cockamamie idea and throw away the valuable A123 trademark. Instead this is business-as-usual for bankruptcy.
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