Financial Restructuring & Insolvency
Our practice represents debtors, trustees, purchasers, and secured, unsecured, and subordinated creditors and equity holders of financially troubled enterprises, with a particular depth of experience in failed or failing real estate and construction projects.
We have been successful in rendering advice, structuring transactions, and developing innovative solutions to protect and enforce estate assets, creditors’ rights, remedies, and security interests and interests of purchasers within and outside of bankruptcy proceedings.
In addition, with our significant experience in large and extensive business reorganizations, we also represent some of the largest lenders in the international real estate and construction sectors, as well as in the surety, railroad, and electric utility industries.
When projects or business plans go awry—as they often do in today’s volatile economic climate—our ability to develop innovative approaches that untangle and resolve complex financial relationships is unsurpassed.
Representative Matters
- Lead bankruptcy counsel representing a surety syndicate in the bankruptcy of Guy F. Atkinson Co., the largest construction contractor reorganization filed in 1997.
- Lead insolvency counsel representing a group of 35 surety insurers in connection with their extensions of credit and participation in the $3.5 billion global restructuring and prepackaged bankruptcy of a major international construction contractor. The deal was rated by the American Lawyer as the third largest bankruptcy in 1996.
- Counsel to a nationwide group of psychiatric care facilities in connection with their restructuring of several complex, interrelated bank financing and bond arrangements with a major commercial bank.
- Counsel to a real estate development company in connection with its restructuring of approximately $25 million of secured debt financing for a District of Columbia real estate project.
- Counsel to a federal agency in the negotiation of a $3.5 billion settlement agreement with regard to the $10 billion bankruptcy reorganization of The LTV Corporation. This representation included a novel method of bridging various valuation disputes, which involved the agency's initial public offering of securities pursuant to an indenture— contingent value rights with a maximum aggregate value of $96 million— and the issuance to the agency of stock appreciation rights issued by The LTV Corporation.
- Counsel to a federal agency in its sale of assets to CF&I and in its purchase of a partnership interest in CF&I, a steel company, in the context of a negotiated plan of reorganization.
- Counsel to a federal agency in the negotiation of the restructuring of certain obligations owed by Farley, Inc. to the agency, including complex secured transactions and intercreditor arrangements in connection with the Farley, Inc. bankruptcy proceeding.
- Lead counsel to the largest unsecured creditors in the reorganization of Cajun Electric Power Cooperative, Inc., one of the major utility reorganizations in the United States. The firm's clients were able to negotiate full, direct, and irrevocable assumption of their $900 million of outstanding obligations by the US government.
- Counsel to a major commercial bank in the bankruptcy of the Antonelli real estate interests, one of the more significant real estate developer proceedings in the United States and the largest in the Washington area. Our client entered the proceeding with the tenth largest claim of any creditor and exited the bankruptcy with the largest claim of any creditor. The workout involved a broad range of techniques for different properties, ranging from restructuring of certain loans, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, uncontested foreclosures, sales of properties, and assumptions of loans by third parties.
- Counsel to a group of environmental companies, as debtors, in a Chapter 11 reorganization proceeding and the sale of the assets of the companies out of bankruptcy.
News
- Steptoe & Johnson LLP Announces Robbin Itkin's Arrival
- Steptoe Launches Subprime Lending Litigation Team
Publications
- May 1, 2008, Digital Discovery & e-Evidence, Vol. 08, No. 05
