Shares of Adelphia, the US's 6th-largest cable TV company, fell another 7% Wednesday, down 45% in the last week.

... the Rigas family borrowed at least $2.3B from banks in which Adelphia guaranteed the loans without recording that fact on the books ...

The Rigases ... have a long history of "being extremely aggressive in pursuing their own interests." ... family investment partnerships had accumulated their own set of cable companies totaling 300,000 subscribers, separate from Adelphia's 5.8 million subscribers in 32 states.

... Investors and analysts, reluctant to ask hard questions, did not see trouble. ... What a skeptic might call nepotism, an optimist might term generational continuity. ...

... hefty off-the-book loans leave Adelphia holding the bag ...

"The scope of the problem is surprising. But I was skeptical of them, because there was always a lot of off-balance-sheet items. You never felt confident that you knew all the facts about what was going on."

The sudden decline in value of the family's holdings has implications for the company ...

... hard to gauge the financial impact ... Adelphia debt could increase to $16B ... which may exceed Adelphia's debt-to-cash-flow limits ... lenders could call the loans, forcing Adelphia into bankruptcy ...

"The question is whether the additional debt is treated as part of the overall debt, for ratio purposes, and will it put the company in technical default. ... I kept asking them where they had gotten the money."

"It was fishy to some investors. Whenever you have a managerial family running assets that are not part of the publicly traded cable assets, especially if they are comparable assets, the question is why they are not in the public company."

"You could argue that the private company was warehousing systems that the public company would someday buy, and in the meantime the public company was getting better volume discounts for programming and equipment. It also meant the private company could buy systems without overleveraging the public company's balance sheet."

... recent disclosures raise new questions ... difficult to answer as long as the Rigases remain incommunicado in Coudersport.

Leonard Tow, who sold Adelphia his cable company (for a 10% stake in Adelphia) several years ago, said he finds it difficult to get Rigas family members on the phone ...