News & Publications

2024 brought a number of headline stories that will impact the bankruptcy and restructuring market in 2025 and beyond. A few of those are summarized below. LMEs (Of course). Liability management exercises — sometimes referred to as "lender-on-lender violence" — continued on their growth trajectory during 2024, with restructuring advisors looking for (and finding) gaps in credit documents that allow for the practice. While uptiers, drop-downs and double-dips were all the talk of the first 364 [...]

Highlights A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has unanimously held that the debt exchange undertaken by Serta Simmons Bedding did not qualify as an "open market purchase" under the terms of Serta's 2016 credit agreement. Therefore, the "uptier transaction" was not permitted, with the Fifth Circuit remanding certain aspects of the case back to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. On the same day [...]

Scott Kirby, CEO of United Airlines, commented on Spirit Airlines' plan of reorganization in the quote below. In short, Kirby appears to think that Spirit's plan is a road to nowhere, except Chapter 7 liquidation. While he isn't exactly an objective observer, he doesn't appear to be wrong either, as Spirit's demise will inure—at least partially—to United's benefit in the zero-sum game of commercial aviation. Spirit's plan appears to swap some debt for equity and [...]