Kirkland & Ellis, LLP will lead a discussion about the current market dynamics affecting distressed hedge funds, how distressed investing strategies have evolved, and strategies distressed funds are using to manage liabilities.

King & Spalding LLP will lead a discussion about topical issues related to creditors “taking the keys” as part of an out-of-court or chapter 11 restructuring process. The panel will discuss issues and considerations unique to creditors obtaining a majority equity stake in a company as part of both consensual and non-consensual restructurings, including the process and tools for securing ownership and negotiating post-reorganization governance, management incentive/retention plans, and exit financing. The panel will also discuss specific governance, management, and financing issues that are unique to creditor-owned companies, including issues that often arise when the equity holders also hold debt claims (as is often the case when creditors “take the keys”).

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP will lead a discussion of the benefits of chapter 11 for international companies in distress, with an emphasis on the aviation sector. This panel will highlight several recent cases, including Scandinavian Airlines to demonstrate how chapter 11 can be an effective tool in implementing successful cross-border restructurings.

With credit markets slowing down due to failed syndications, the collapse of interest rate arbitrage, lending funds experiencing outflows and CLO hand-wringing over excessive CCC and B-holdings, the private lending market has taken over as a primary means to secured leverage in the middle market.

Major asset managers are reallocating billions of dollars into this space and credit opportunity funds have been using these instruments to get superior terms (and actual covenants!) when providing structured solutions (read: secured equity).

This panel of leading private lenders and their advisors will discuss these trends, their strategies and tactics for sourcing and funding investments and their outlook for the next 24 months.

In recent years, we have seen extremely low volumes of bankruptcy filings, even in the face of a generational pandemic and a ten-fold increase in fed fund rates.

In this panel, we will examine the trends that have led to this decline in filings: more certain case law, significant available liquidity, willingness to execute deals outside of bankruptcy or in very short proceedings, heightened leverage for borrowers, vanishing covenants, and less organized lenders.

Then, we will discuss where the market is headed. Will these trends continue? How will the market react now, with rates having risen so quickly? Will the new environment change the impact of these trends?

In recent years, so called “lender-on-lender violence” as a means to implement liability management has increased in prevalence, through the use of various structures such as drop-down financings, priming financings, and uptier transactions. This panel will explore the recent history and evolution of these transactions, including those in J.Crew, Neiman Marcus, PetSmart, Serta, Trimark, Boardriders, and Wesco, what may be next, and how the creditor community can fight back.

After a red-hot, post-COVID bounce-back, the telltale signs of an impending recession are here: the yield curve has inverted, commodity prices remain volatile, the stock market has experienced the worst six months since the financial crisis in 2008, and an emerging asset class, crypto, has imploded. Some think the recession is already here, but most agree the worst is yet to come. While the current landscape may be inspiring anxiety for business leaders (despite excitement for restructuring professionals), proper preparations can help mitigate downside impacts, no matter the size of the economic waves. Our panelist will share some no-regret moves to help business leaders keep pace with the quickly changing marketplace as the economic pressures continue to evolve.