Bankruptcy & Restructuring

Representing distressed companies is a hallmark of G&M’s practice. G&M attorneys have represented distressed companies across a wide array of industries, ranging from closely-held family businesses to multi-billion dollar companies. Regardless of size, our focus – helping our clients leverage crisis to achieve holistic business solutions and lasting outcomes – remains the same.

G&M’s professionals commence any troubled company engagement by quickly gaining a thorough understanding of the business situation and issues – and then working with management to identify the best possible strategy for resolving the issues and maximizing stakeholder outcomes. G&M’s role is to help the client anticipate issues and understand leverage positions, identify the optimum achievable outcome, and devise a concrete action plan for successfully, efficiently, and expeditiously implementing the selected strategy.

G&M’s professionals understand that restructuring objectives are often best – and most efficiently – achieved outside of bankruptcy. As a result, we advise our clients to seek strategic advice and address issues early, and we count many consensual out-of-court resolutions as among our most successful engagements. When engaged in a financial distress situation, G&M’s professionals draw on their substantial experience working with troubled businesses to help devise creative solutions for companies, their creditors, equity holders, and other constituencies.

When a client’s objectives cannot be achieved through an out-of-court solution, G&M’s attorneys employ their extensive experience assisting sophisticated corporate debtors in a wide variety of industries to resolve their financial and/or operational issues through a strategic court-sanctioned reorganization process. Although G&M’s attorneys do not shy away from conflict where needed – sometimes a necessary step in the process of resolving key issues – G&M’s attorneys seek to minimize unnecessary litigation. Our objective in court-supervised proceedings is the same as it is out of court: helping our clients maximize value by efficiently and expeditiously achieving pre-identified objectives, ideally accomplishing this by working cooperatively with key stakeholders.

Although chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings are often thought of as “reorganization” cases – and rightly so – chapter 11 is a flexible process that can also be strategically employed to help effectuate a “going concern” sale of assets. In fact, in many cases, buyers of distressed businesses will insist on assets being sold in bankruptcy in order to minimize the risk of successor liability and/or to take advantage of the ability to “pick and choose” contracts to be assumed (as opposed to rejected). G&M’s professionals have extensive experience with distressed going-concern sales, and can help distressed companies navigate the Bankruptcy process and maximize value in a sale scenario.

If a bankruptcy is commenced, G&M’s experienced partners work directly with the client – providing the hands-on focus necessary for our clients to successfully navigate the chapter 11 process. We minimize uncertainty and disruption by setting clear and achievable objectives at the outset, and by actively communicating with stakeholders to achieve those objectives (with key issues often resolved long before a case is commenced). We also work closely with management to develop communication plans for vendors, customers, and other groups before a case is filed. The focus of everything we do is to minimize business disruption and to achieve our clients’ objectives as quickly and efficiently as possible.

G&M was founded in order to provide distressed middle market businesses with better and more efficient legal representation, and it is unique in several ways.  For one, G&M’s ability to provide extremely high-level experience (all of its partners spent years at prestigious “white shoe” firms) at far more reasonable cost (G&M is significantly more efficient than its mostly larger competitors) truly sets it apart.  Second, although G&M is a boutique firm, G&M maintains offices throughout the country, including in Delaware, in order to facilitate a nationwide practice (eliminating the need for local counsel in many instances).  And third, G&M intentionally does not represent any of the large “money-center” banks – typically leaving it conflict free and allowing it to aggressively represent its clients (a major issue at larger firms).

G&M’s professionals have substantial experience representing secured creditors in a wide-array of transactions, not only in workouts and foreclosures (including enforcing rights in bankruptcy where necessary), but also in creditor/borrower litigation and in commercial asset recovery and judgment enforcement (litigation) matters. The following window provides additional insights into G&M’s secured creditor practice.

G&M regularly helps its secured lender clients enforce their rights in foreclosure and workout matters, providing pragmatic and sensible advice that is informed by G&M’s extensive experience turning around distressed companies. When a holistic solution cannot be achieved, G&M represents its clients in connection with assignments for the benefit of creditors and Uniform Commercial Code sales, and when matters transition to bankruptcy, G&M’s experienced professionals are well prepared to protect their clients’ rights.

G&M routinely represents lending institutions and other secured creditors in a variety of litigation matters. One major area is creditor/borrower litigation – defending actions brought by borrowers (such as lender liability suits) or prosecuting actions on behalf of lenders (such as fraud claims against borrowers). A second is in connection with commercial asset recovery and judgment enforcement. Too often, lenders either (a) decide not to pursue delinquent borrowers or guarantors due to the inherent costs and uncertainty of litigation or (b) obtain judgments but then are unable to collect (or unwilling to incur the costs associated with collecting). Because G&M’s litigators are very adept at pursuing assets in these situations – including where assets have been fraudulently transferred or otherwise hidden – G&M is often willing to work with its financial institution clients to structure alternative fee arrangements that cap exposure while ensuring that all avenues to a recovery are pursued. See additional detail on G&M’s Commercial Litigation practice group page.

G&M’s finance practice group provides efficient and practical legal counsel in connection with all types of complex lending transactions. This includes traditional commercial real estate and asset based lending as well as tax exempt financing such as federal new markets tax credits. G&M also has extensive experience with 7(a) and 504 lending programs administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration. See additional detail on G&M’s Finance practice group page.

G&M is unique in its ability to provide its secured creditor clients with extremely high-level professionals (all of G&M’s partners spent years at prestigious “white shoe” firms) at far more reasonable cost (G&M is significantly more efficient than its mostly larger competitors). G&M’s deep bankruptcy bench allows for seamless representation where workout matters become more complex, and G&M’s office locations – including an office in Wilmington, Delaware – are strategically located to minimize the need for local counsel (maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs). Finally, G&M’s willingness to entertain alternative fee arrangements – something many firms advertise but rarely agree to – frequently provides huge savings and greatly enhanced certainty to G&M’s lender clients.

G&M’s restructuring and corporate professionals regularly represent purchasers of distressed (and healthy) assets and businesses around the United States. Not only do we document and close deals – and identify ways that our clients can minimize risk and cost – we are deeply invested in their clients’ success and regularly work to identify leads and opportunities. Likely as a direct result, several of G&M’s most long-standing clients are businesses and funds that routinely look for and acquire troubled businesses and assets.

Companies often end up in distress for reasons ancillary to their core business – for example too much debt, litigation, a lost customer, an unexpected change in material pricing, or a failed transaction. These distress situations are frequently resolved through a sale or sales of the business or parts thereof – often involving the divestiture of key tangible and intangible business assets. Sales of this nature can provide an incredible opportunity for creative strategic and financial buyers to expand into new markets, add customers or capacity, or otherwise advance business objectives at prices that reflect the “distressed” nature of the transaction (i.e., often well below the true potential of the assets). G&M’s experienced professionals regularly help our clients minimize risk in distress situations and to close what are often challenging – but potentially extremely lucrative – transactions.

We rely on the success of our clients. Hence we go over and above to make our clients even more successful. On the acquisition front, we scour numerous sources on a daily basis to identify potential opportunities, always with an eye towards deals that might be a “fit” for our clients. This is true not only for clients that are in the business of buying corporate assets (e.g., funds and “roll-ups”) but also for regular corporate clients that can potentially benefit from a strategic addition (e.g., a company that can add market share and increase efficiency via the acquisition of a competitor).

G&M’s restructuring and corporate professionals are not only extremely experienced in navigating the acquisition of business assets – in both distressed and healthy transactions – they are uniquely attuned to helping our clients succeed by identifying opportunities. We spend time every day looking for opportunities for our clients, and nothing makes us happier than seeing a client grow and prosper from a deal we identified and helped to close. More broadly, as is the case with other practice areas, G&M’s combination of extremely high-quality yet cost-effective representation is rare – if not unique – in the marketplace. And unlike many firms, G&M is open to implementing alternative fee structures for transactional matters in appropriate circumstances.