One Bowling Green is the place to be, apparently. For those who don’t recognize the address, that’s the location of the Manhattan courthouse for the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Wall Street has a favorite new spot for the power lunch: bankruptcy court.”
After the jump, the lawyers they found malingering in the area (including one with a spectacular item on his bio).
Bankruptcy court is “a place where you can’t afford not to be,” said Jere Thomson, the head of law firm Jones Day’s mergers and acquisitions practice in North America, who helped strike Chrysler Group LLC’s recent alliance with Fiat SpA. Mr. Thomson said he has “traditionally been a conventional M&A lawyer.” Today, he said he is more useful “when combined with a bankruptcy practice.”
Thomson (Williams BA ‘65, Penn JD ‘67) was probably there seeing what scraps his partner Corinne Ball (Williams BA ‘75, GWU JD ‘78) would throw his way. After all, she’s “The Woman Steering Chrysler Through Chapter 11” and he’s an M&A lawyer hanging around a bankruptcy court. Ephelia the Purple Cow must be so proud to see tow of her alums doing so well together!
Marty Bienenstock was also hanging around and ready with a soundbite. Unlike Thomson, though, the head of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s reorganization practice is supposed to be at bankruptcy court.
“The traditional stand-alone reorganization is on the endangered species list due to the lack of financing, so the acquisition in bankruptcy is much more prevalent in this cycle,” said Martin Bienenstock, who heads Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP’s bankruptcy practice. Mr. Bienenstock spearheaded General Motors Corp.’s fast-paced strategy to sell its desirable assets to a “New GM” while its more-onerous assets wind down in bankruptcy court.
“In this cycle, so many situations are dire, like with retailers, that there need to be quick solutions,” Mr. Bienenstock said. In Masonite’s case, stakeholders had a reorganization plan in place even prior to the company’s Chapter 11 filing. In the end, 161 senior secured lenders — including Scotiabank of Canada and private-equity firms Centerbridge Partners LP and Oaktree Capital Management LP — swapped more than $1.4 billion in debt for a collective 97.5% stake in a new company. No firm has more than a 20% stake in the new Masonite, though Oaktree and Centerbridge installed several board members.
Boy, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a BigLaw partner down there. Even Kirkland & Ellis was on hand:
“Debt is the new equity. There are tremendous opportunities for investors to really take control of, or purchase, companies at a very good price,” said Jonathan Henes, a bankruptcy partner at law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP who oversaw Masonite’s restructuring. Creditors approved the plan about 85 days after Masonite sought Chapter 11 protection.
Henes (Union BA ‘91, Cardozo JD ‘96) has one of the single greatest engagements we’ve ever seen. He got to be Harvey Miller’s personal lawyer in a bankruptcy matter. OK, technically, it was Weil Gotshal (Henes must have lateralled), and technically, they represented the Trustee (which happened to be Miller) – but still, that’s fantastic. Normally, we’d give him a hard time for putting a deal on his bio from when he was a first year at another firm, but that’s a singular honor.
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