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Practice/Industry Group Overview
Wachtell Lipton has one of the leading restructuring practices in the nation, principally representing banks, insurance companies, investment funds, and securities and derivative dealers as creditors in national and multinational bankruptcy cases and restructurings. Its lawyers regularly work with the firm's corporate group to handle complicated acquisitions or divestitures of businesses in financial distress or bankruptcy, highly leveraged transactions and other major transactions involving significant creditors' rights issues. Wachtell Lipton's current and recent restructuring engagements include representation of bank groups, other major creditors, owners, buyers or bidders in the restructurings and Chapter 11 cases of Delphi (where the firm represented Capital Research & Management Company, the largest bondholder and chair of the official creditors committee), Refco (where the firm represented Man Group in acquiring Refco's futures business in a hotly contested auction), Calpine, Northwest Airlines, Collins & Aikman, SunCom, Worldcom, Enron, Kmart (where the firm represented Edward S. Lampert's investment vehicle in acquiring control of Kmart), Cable & Wireless (where the firm represented the UK's Cable and Wireless plc in the successful separation and sale of its financially distressed U.S. subsidiaries through a U.S. bankruptcy sale culminating in a consensual plan) and Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. The firm also handles high-profile litigation matters involving restructuring and finance issues, such as Liquidating Trust of Vlasic Foods International v. Campbell Soup Company (the successful defense of Campbell Soup against a fraudulent conveyance claim arising from the spin-off of its Vlasic Foods International specialty food business, which filed chapter 11 after the spin-off) and Footstar v. Kmart (where the firm represented Kmart in its dispute, and ultimately successful settlement with Footstar, over Footstar's attempt to compel assumption of its license to operate the shoe departments in all Kmart stores).
Lawyers from the restructuring and finance group also work closely with the corporate group in structuring and documenting acquisition financing for corporate transactions, including bank facilities and capital markets transactions. The firm represents leading private equity sponsors on financing matters, including Apollo, Goldman Sachs, Fox Paine, Morgan Stanley, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Warburg Pincus and Silver Lake. Wachtell Lipton's financing practice works on some of the most high-profile sponsor and strategic acquisitions. Recent engagements include financing in connection with the acquisition by Apax, Apollo, Madison Dearborn and Permira of Intelsat (the world's largest fixed satellite company) and the subsequent acquisition of PanAmSat (the world's second largest fixed satellite company) by Intelsat, the acquisition of Albertsons by SUPERVALU, the acquisition of Pan Pacific Retail Properties by Kimco Realty Corporation, the merger of Sears with Kmart, the merger of Thermo Electron with Fisher Scientific, the spin-off of Expedia, the merger of Lucent with Alcatel, the initial public offering of Lazard and the recent acquisitions by Apollo of Metals USA, Covalence Specialty Materials, Berry Plastics, Momentive Performance Materials and the logistics business of TNT N.V. The restructuring and finance group also works on high-profile sell-side financing matters, including the sales of Sports Authority, Tommy Hilfiger and Outback Steakhouse.
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