When a borrower or issuer comes under stress, recovery is decided by the moves made first. We act for lenders, bondholders, funds, and committees, protecting their position, their bargaining power, and the value that is actually collectible.
The first question in any distressed credit is whether the collateral covers the debt, because the Code treats the answer as a cliff. An oversecured creditor accrues interest and its contractual fees; an undersecured one stops accruing interest the day the petition is filed, and its claim splits into a secured piece sized to the collateral and an unsecured piece that votes with the trade. A creditor that cannot put its valuation before the court is priced by the debtor's.
The United States Trustee appoints the official committee from the largest unsecured creditors willing to serve, and the estate pays its counsel. Bondholders who form an ad hoc group fund themselves and must disclose each member's holdings under Rule 2019, so the group's size and exposure are public before it speaks. Both bodies get their best terms before the final DIP order is entered, not after: a roll-up or a priming lien that goes unopposed at the interim hearing is rarely unwound at the final one.
We act for lenders, bondholders, funds and committees, and we coordinate locally admitted counsel where the debtor's assets sit abroad.
Counsel to banks, direct lenders, and other secured creditors, confirming the validity and priority of security and then defending its value through adequate-protection demands, valuation disputes, and the terms of any plan or sale.
Organizing and representing bondholders, funds, and other creditors as ad hoc groups, coordinating aligned interests to negotiate, litigate, and shape a restructuring with the weight of a bloc.
Representation of official committees of unsecured creditors in Chapter 11, investigating the estate, scrutinizing the debtor's proposals, and protecting the recovery of the class the committee speaks for.
Negotiating and contesting debtor-in-possession financing and cash-collateral use, including the priming liens, milestones, and protections that often set the trajectory of a case before a plan is ever filed.
Representation in plan confirmation, 363 sales, and intercreditor and priority disputes, objecting where value is misallocated and pressing for terms that protect a creditor's distribution.
Pursuing the claims that add value to a distribution, among them preferential and fraudulent transfers, breaches of directors' duties, and other estate causes of action, with the standing analysis behind them.
Final DIP and cash-collateral orders give the committee a window, commonly sixty to seventy-five days, to challenge the prepetition lender's liens and the debtor's stipulations about them; after it closes the stipulations bind the estate. A committee that neither sues nor settles inside the window has conceded the secured debt.
A lender whose collateral is worth less than its debt may elect to have the whole claim treated as secured, giving up its deficiency vote for a plan that must pay the full face with a present value equal to the collateral. It answers a debtor that marks collateral low and sells it high later.
If the borrower changed its name and the lender never amended its financing statement, collateral the borrower acquired more than four months after the change is unperfected, and the estate takes it free of the lien under the strong-arm power. The committee's lien review hunts for that, plus unsigned deposit-account control agreements and lapsed filings.
A committee seat carries fiduciary duties to the whole class and, for a fund that trades, a court-approved screening wall or a frozen position. An ad hoc group owes only its members and trades freely, but pays its counsel unless a plan or restructuring support agreement pays or the court finds a substantial contribution.
Transfers to non-insiders in the ninety days before filing and to insiders in the year before can be recovered as preferences, subject to the ordinary-course and new-value defenses the recipient must prove. The debtor rarely sues its lender, so the committee seeks standing to sue or a plan assigns the claims to a litigation trust.
Holders of English-law bonds may be restructured in England: a scheme binds a class on seventy-five percent in value and a majority in number of those voting, and since 2020 a restructuring plan can bind a dissenting class if none of its members would do worse in the alternative. Both are recognized through Chapter 15.
Before anything is negotiated, the claim itself is audited: validity, perfection, and priority of the security, the intercreditor stack, and where the value breaks. The group then organizes around that answer as an official committee, an ad hoc coalition, or a lone secured seat.
DIP financing, cash-collateral use, priming liens, and case milestones are set in the opening days and rarely reopened. We press adequate-protection demands and strip milestones that would hand the debtor the timetable.
Valuation decides who is in the money, so the middle of the case is fought there, across plan negotiations, 363 sale terms, credit-bid rights, and intercreditor disputes over who absorbs the loss.
Recovery extends past the headline claim: preference and fraudulent-transfer actions, directors'-duty claims from the zone of insolvency, and the standing analysis for who brings them. Then come confirmation, distribution, and collection across every jurisdiction the debtor touched.
In a contest over shrinking value, the creditor who organizes first writes the rules the others recover under.
Acting for the people owed money when the borrower cannot pay everyone. The work begins with an audit of the client's own claim, meaning the loan documents, the perfection of the liens and the intercreditor agreement, since each is tested the moment a petition is filed. It then runs through the case in the order the Code sets: the DIP and cash-collateral orders in the first two weeks, where adequate protection, roll-ups and milestones are fixed; the challenge period, where the committee investigates the prepetition liens; and the valuation and plan contest, where a class accepts on two thirds in amount and a majority in number of the claims voted. Alongside sit the estate claims that enlarge the pot, preferences and fraudulent transfers among them. Out of court, the same analysis drives a forbearance or a workout, with the Chapter 11 outcome as the measuring stick.
An official committee, most commonly an official committee of unsecured creditors, is appointed in a Chapter 11 case to represent a class as a whole, with its professionals typically paid from the estate. An ad hoc group is an informal coalition of creditors, often bondholders or funds with aligned interests, that organizes to negotiate and litigate collectively, usually at its members' own cost. We advise creditors on which posture fits their holdings and their objectives.
With the tools the Code hands a secured creditor, used in order. Adequate protection first: the debtor may use the lender's cash collateral or prime its lien only if the lender's interest is protected, by periodic payments, replacement liens or an equivalent the court accepts, and if that protection later proves inadequate the shortfall becomes a superpriority administrative claim ahead of every other unsecured creditor. Then the valuation record, because an undersecured lender's claim is bifurcated at the collateral's value while an oversecured lender keeps accruing interest and fees, so the appraisal decides which the client is. Then the Section 1111(b) election and the right to credit bid at any sale, which together stop a debtor from marking the collateral low and reselling it high. The plan itself must leave the lender its lien and pay the secured claim's present value, or give it the indubitable equivalent, before it can be confirmed over the lender's objection.
Before the first deadline runs, and the deadlines start earlier than most creditors expect. A notice of default starts the cure and standstill clocks in the credit agreement. A supplier's rights are measured in days: goods delivered in the twenty days before the petition are an administrative claim paid in full, and goods delivered in the forty-five days before can be reclaimed by a written demand sent within forty-five days of delivery, or twenty days after the filing if that comes later. The interim DIP hearing is held within a day or two of the petition and the final hearing a fortnight after, which is when roll-ups and milestones are fixed. A bondholder who wants a seat in an ad hoc group joins before the group signs a restructuring support agreement, not after. Counsel retained at the covenant breach can meet each of those dates; counsel retained at the bar date can only file a proof of claim.
Yes. The US entry point is Chapter 15, under which a foreign representative asks the bankruptcy court to recognize a foreign proceeding. Recognition as a main proceeding, available where the debtor has its center of main interests, presumed to be its registered office, brings the automatic stay down on the debtor's US assets without further motion; recognition as a nonmain proceeding gives only the relief the court chooses to grant. A creditor's position therefore depends on where the main case is opened, and a debtor can often choose. English schemes and restructuring plans, Cayman and Bermuda schemes, and Dutch and German plan procedures all travel into the United States this way. We handle the US side and coordinate with our partner firms in London and Dubai and with locally admitted counsel in the offshore centers, so that a creditor's objection or vote is made once, in the forum that counts, and recognized in the others.
Yes. On the creditor and committee side, recovery often includes investigating and pursuing estate claims, such as preferential or fraudulent transfers, breaches of directors' duties, and other causes of action that add value to a distribution. We assess these claims and the standing to bring them, and we advise on which of a committee, a trustee, or assigned creditors should pursue them, depending on the case and the governing law.
In-court reorganizations under Chapter 11, covering debtor-in-possession strategy, plan confirmation, and the contested process through which a business is restructured.
Explore →Sales of distressed businesses and assets, including section 363 sales, structured for speed, certainty, and a clean title through the stress.
Explore →Consensual amendments, standstills, refinancings, and balance-sheet restructurings negotiated outside formal process, while the parties still hold the timetable.
Explore →Reviewed by Jonathan D. Herpy, Sr., Senior Partner · Last updated October 2026 · Educational overview · Not legal advice
One partner is accountable for the whole matter, and you have that partner's direct line. Chicago, London, and Dubai work to the same standard.