Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts

Creating Value Through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts, and Breakups




With the number of corporate bond defaults up sharply over the lows of the middle-to-late 1990s, Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts, and Breakups (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) is reaching the market at an apt moment. The book, which is written by Harvard Business School Professor Stuart Gilson, employs the case study method to examine the restructuring of the claims of creditors, shareholders, and employees. Of greatest interest to high yield and distressed investors is the section on financial distress, which studies such familiar companies as Continental Airlines, Flagstar Companies, The Loewen Group, and National Convenience Stores. Gilson also provides a market survey of distressed investing, exploring such nuances as prepackaged bankruptcy, "bondmail" (gaining control of a class of debt to block approval of a reorganization plan), exit strategies, tax issues, and disqualification of votes on a bankruptcy reorganization plan. Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring also addresses company overhauls that occur outside the context of potential or actual bankruptcy. Techniques include issuance of tracking stock, spin-offs, layoffs, plant closings, revisions of employee retirement benefits, and mergers. Gilson maintains a global perspective, incorporating cases not only from the United States, but also from Germany and Thailand."-- High Yield, a Merrill publication by Marty Fridson