To me the key part was that they couldn't create a new loan. The mistake wouldn't have mattered much if Citi/Revlon had been on good terms with their creditors.
Well the underlying issue was that they accidentally sent the money in the first place. The fact that they were on bad terms with their creditors meant that they couldn't correct the mistake after it happened.
> The mistake wouldn't have mattered much...
Accidentally sending nearly 1 Billion dollars is a pretty big mistake and it matters a lot. You can't just be throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into people's accounts and think its not a big deal because they will "probably" give it back.
Maybe. A billion here, a billion there. Judging from that UI and overview of their process/controls, I can't imagine this was the first time something like this happened.
It seems noteworthy because they didn't quickly restructure the debt. They weren't throwing money into random accounts, they accidentally sent payments early.
Edit: Removed accusation.