Restructuring & Insolvency

Focus

Levenfeld Pearlstein's Restructuring & Insolvency Law Service Group helps its clients through difficult situations by combining sophisticated business advisory skills with creative and practical legal counsel. The group has significant experience representing distressed companies and their various constituents, including committees, trustees, creditors, asset purchasers, third party plan proponents, and post-confirmation trusts. The group's experience includes advising boards with respect to their fiduciary duties, representing private equity and hedge funds in distressed M&A transactions, and representing parties in virtually all facets of out-of-court workouts and bankruptcy proceedings. It also maintains a broad range of relationships with both traditional and non-traditional financing sources for multi-level debt structuring and real estate financing. Ultimately, in consultation with its clients, Levenfeld Pearlstein aggressively pursues a favorable result.

Overview

Levenfeld Pearlstein’s Restructuring & Insolvency Law Service Group has deep experience in all facets of assignments, bankruptcy, crisis management, out-of-court workouts, and receiverships. Our practice is national and international in scope; our attorneys have led engagements across the United States and internationally.

Debtors: We regularly help distressed businesses manage their problems. We do this by negotiating favorable deals where possible and by litigating when necessary. While litigation is rarely our first choice based on expense, we are well equipped to fight when it is appropriate. We have successfully litigated virtually every issue that arises in bankruptcy, including: contested cash collateral and adequate protection disputes; post-petition financing contests; automatic stay disputes; and contested confirmation hearings.

Purchasers: One of our core strengths is representing sophisticated purchasers, including private equity and hedge funds in acquisitions of distressed businesses. We work closely with our Hedge Fund, Real Estate, and Private Equity groups to ensure that deals are completed efficiently and all compliance issues are handled correctly.

Creditors: Our creditor representations are numerous and varied-

  • Financial Institutions: we have a long history of protecting the interests banks when their loans go into default
  • Commercial landlords: we work with many landlords when their tenants breach their leases.
  • Trade Creditors: we represent trade creditors in a myriad of matters related to the extension of credit and collection of monies owed.

We also regularly defend creditors against preference and fraudulent conveyance actions.

Committees: Our attorneys have represented official and unofficial committees of creditors and equity holders in Chapter 11 cases across the United States.

Assignees, Receivers, Liquidating Trusts, and Bankruptcy Trustees: We have significant experience representing each of these. Our attorneys are frequent lecturers and authors in cutting-edge issues and are prominent members of various industry organizations.

 

Representative Matters

  • Representing a hotel in connection with its workout of approximately $15 million of secured debt
  • Representing a regional land developer in its workout of more than $200 m of secured debt
  • Representing the FDIC, as receiver for Indymac, in connection with the Chapter 11 case of Neumann Homes
  • Representing one of the largest unsecured creditors of Kimball Hill in all aspects of the Kimball Hill bankruptcy, including in connection with that creditor’s membership on the official committee of unsecured creditors
  • Representing several private equity funds in connection with their various acquisitions of distressed companies
  • Representing several small companies (revenues less than $ 20 million) in connection with working out their financial distress
  • Defending a creditor in an adversary proceeding seeking to re-characterize equipment leases as disguised finance agreements
  • Representing the trustee in a fraudulent transfer against the debtor’s corporate officers and insiders
  • Representing a number of secured creditor in complex litigation in connection with several separate bankruptcy cases
  • Served as lead counsel to the Ad Hoc Group of Secured Trade in the Chapter 11 case of Neumann Homes, Inc. Case No. 07 B 20412 in Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois
  • Served as lead counsel to the Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the Chapter 11 case of Universal Food & Beverage, Inc. Case No. 07 B 15955 in Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois
  • Served as lead counsel to the Hydraulic Technologies, Inc. in its Chapter 11 case. HTI was a $50 million-revenue supplier to original equipment manufacturers. . An emergency Chapter 11 filing was prepared over the course of a long weekend and a sale of substantially all of the company's assets was achieved in short order. Case No. 07-61947-rk in Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division
  • Served as lead counsel to the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the Chapter 11 Case of Capital Engineering & Manufacturing Company. This case was filed as a result of a shareholder dispute and then lingered for nearly a year. The dissident shareholders sought to convert the case to Chapter 7. The Debtor sought to sell the assets to insiders. We organized an informal committee and persuaded the United States Trustee to form a formal committee consisting of the members of the informal committee. The case was over within one month, with 100% payout to unsecured creditors
  • Represented the Equity Committee for shareholders of Advanced Lighting Technologies, Inc. Created the liquidating trust used to liquidate assets for 6,000 shareholders, and advised its trustee. Our firm handled the sale of the trust's assets and dealt with all related securities and tax issues. We played a significant role in building the trust's value to enable it to distribute more than ten times originally projected
  • Represented the Debtors in all aspects of their cases in HomeLife Corporation - Case No. 01-02412 in Bankruptcy Court for District of Delaware. HomeLife, which was a Sears spin-off, was a large furniture retailer
  • Represented Globe Manufacturing Corp., first as counsel when an involuntary bankruptcy petition was filed against it. The petition was dismissed at the first day hearing. Then, after guiding the company to a more favorable jurisdiction for a voluntary Chapter 11, as special corporate counsel for the purpose of negotiating and consummating the sale of all its assets - Case No. 01-70115 in Bankruptcy Court for Northern District of Alabama
  • Represented Wachovia in an action against the owner of a shell company that had borrowed money for use in margin trading, and then engaged in a series of apparent fraudulent transfers through multiple layers of shell companies to make the borrowing entity insolvent and judgment-proof. When the Defendant's companies filed bankruptcy, we successfully defeated the cases as bad faith filings
  • Represented many traditional lenders in connection with many commercial bankruptcy cases