ELD ordinary shareholders cannot get 1 cent of any kind of...

ELD ordinary shareholders cannot get 1 cent of any kind of distribution(either dividend or capital return) until hybrids have received a year's worth of hybrid distributions. ie. if you are telling me the hybrids are zero coupon perpetuals then the ordinary shares are more so!

Any profits that may accumulate as a result of not paying hybrid and ordinary distributions, are going straight to reducing senior debt. Which, yes, deleverages both hybrids and ordinary equity. but given the current distressed pricing of both equity and hybrids , i suggest any deleveraging benefits hybrids more.

Finally, ordinary equity not only faces the first loss of selling assets below book value, but presumably if the ordinary shares were trading higher management would opt to do a dilutive equity raising(eg. Transpacific) rather than sell assets cheaply to retire debt. in other words: if the shares were any higher ordinary's would face the risk of being clobbered with a dilutive equity raising.

The most accretive thing managment could do for ordinary shareholders would be to use the asset sale proceeds to buy back hybrids on market at 40c in the dollar. That would accrue a 60c profit to ordinary shareholders for every 40c spent..