Reviewed by Keith J. Shapiro
Greenberg Traurig LLP; Chicago
No senior executive or general counsel of a troubled company should take another step without reading Peter Kaufman and Henry Owsley’s practical and concise primer on distressed investment banking. With Distressed Investment Banking: To the Abyss and Back, these senior partners from Gordian Group LLC provide overwhelmed leaders of troubled businesses with a financial road map of what to expect and how to successfully navigate waters that most executives are ill-prepared to swim in.
Hailing from a firm known for its zero tolerance of business conflicts resulting from representing bondholders and banks, the authors provide insights into the mindsets and likely game plans of all of the constituencies in the troubled company game. They deal head-on with issues such as how to defeat the absolute priority rule of the Bankruptcy Code in order to allow existing equity-holders to walk away with value when others ahead of them in the priority scheme may not be getting paid in full. Steering clear of big-picture theory, they get down and dirty about the real game that goes on in the chapter 11 trenches.