NTL vendor financing gambit fails

No room at Pace and IBM's inns...

Troubled cable operator, NTL has been denied key vendor financing, endangering its attempts to extend its cash reserves beyond the next twelve months. The company had hoped to build on the $250m it received from suppliers like Cisco and Nortel with funding from set top box maker Pace and IBM, through which the cable operator outsources its IT. Pace has said it is against vendor financing as a matter of company policy, but IBM has declined to explain why it denied NTL help. The decision comes immediately after the company faced a barrage of share holder criticism this weekend, as it emerged it had given US telephony and internet company CoreComm $15m. Shareholders were angry that NTL chiefs George Bl;umenthal and Barclay Knapp also have active roles on the board of CoreComm.