Mercer Withdraws its Cease Trade Application

AbitibiBowater Inc., doing business as Resolute Forest Products ABHtoday announced that Mercer International Inc. MERC has withdrawn its application requesting an order to cease trade Resolute's offer to acquire Fibrek Inc. Mercer filed its application with the Bureau de d cision et de r vision (Qu bec) on March 29. Yesterday the Company announced that the Supreme Court of Canada had refused to hear an appeal by Fibrek and Mercer of the Qu bec Court of Appeal's decision concerning Fibrek's special warrants. Accordingly, the order issued by the Bureau de d cision et de r vision (Qu bec) on February 23 is now final and non-appealable, and Fibrek's dilutive private placement of 32,320,000 special warrants to Mercer is definitively cease traded. On April 11, Resolute acquired 60,831,859 Fibrek shares, representing approximately 46.8% of those currently outstanding, and announced that it had extended the expiry time for its offer in order to allow additional Fibrek shareholders to participate. The offer currently expires at 5:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on April 23, 2012.