3 minute read | August.13.2026
The restructuring market has never been more complex or consequential for the professionals navigating it, as liability management exercises reshape creditor rights, Chapter 11 battles grow increasingly sophisticated, and the tools, tactics and vocabulary of distressed investing continue to evolve.
Orrick’s Restructuring team was pleased to present a three-part summer series that provided junior professionals at financial institutions, special situations desks, and credit funds with a practical, creditor-focused foundation in the mechanics and strategy of distressed situations – taught by the practitioners working these deals every day.
When a credit tips into distress, not all creditors see the same situation – because not all creditors sit in the same place. In this session, we built the foundation: how leveraged capital structures work, how recovery value gets allocated across loan and bond creditors, and how the governance rights of each differ in ways that matter enormously once a situation deteriorates. We also covered the mechanics of the distressed secondary market – LSTA settlement, claims trading, and what a junior professional needs to understand before their desk trades into a stressed name.
Orrick panelists included Manny Grillo, Amy Pasacreta and Jenna Busche, moderated by Laura Metzger.
Borrowers and their advisors have spent years developing increasingly aggressive out-of-court techniques – uptiers, dropdowns, exchange offers, consent solicitations – designed to reshape capital structures at creditors’ expense. In this session, we covered the full out-of-court toolkit from the creditor’s perspective: what these transactions are designed to accomplish, what rights creditors have to resist them, and how cooperation agreements and RSAs have become essential instruments for organizing creditor groups and preserving optionality. The central questions throughout were: what is the borrower trying to do, do I have to go along with it and what happens if I don’t?
Orrick panelists included Adam Ross, Robert Trust, Ari Roytenberg and Mike Trentin, moderated by Raniero D’Aversa.
When out-of-court efforts fail, the game changes. In this session, we covered the mechanics of a Chapter 11 from the creditor seat – the automatic stay, DIP financing and priming fights, and the strategic calculus of ad hoc versus official creditor committees. We then turned to the confirmation endgame: voting across loan and bond classes, reinstatement versus new paper versus cramdown, and the tools available to a creditor who wants to block or reshape a plan.
Orrick panelists included David Litterine-Kaufman, Mark Franke and Nick Sabatino, moderated by Evan Hollander.