Clients have trusted Sullivan & Cromwell for more than 125 years to help navigate complex restructuring situations. The Firm advises companies, boards, owners and new investors, focusing on four areas:
- crisis management and corporate contingency planning;
- implementation of corporate and financial restructurings, including exchange offers, asset dispositions and judicial proceedings;
- distressed-for-control acquisitions; and
- special situation and bankruptcy litigation.
S&C’s work includes many of the largest and most complex restructurings in the history of the United States, including its assignments at the epicenter of the global financial crisis in 2008 and its leading role in the successful Chapter 11 reorganizations of major industrials in the wake of that crisis. The expertise gained from these matters informs the Firm’s approach to all of its assignments.
The Firm’s expertise is international. Its lawyers practice English, U.S., German and French law and have served as co-counsel or coordinating counsel on restructuring engagements involving more than 100 other jurisdictions. In global matters, S&C lawyers work alongside colleagues from other leading law firms to provide clients with the optimal combination of global best practices and local expertise.
S&C is known, in particular, for the breadth of its knowledge and the integration of its lawyers, who are part of a single, global partnership without profit center or internal division. Every restructuring engagement involves the formation of an ad hoc team that is drawn from elite restructuring, mergers-and-acquisitions, litigation, regulatory, tax and finance resources through the Firm.
SELECTED REPRESENTATIONS
Sullivan & Cromwell lawyers have been involved in hundreds of restructuring transactions, and more specific credentials are available upon request for any industry or jurisdiction. Representative matters include:
- Eastman Kodak, as counsel to the company in its successful global restructuring, Chapter 11 case and relisting.
- Chrysler Group, as counsel to Fiat and New Chrysler in the acquisition and Chapter 11 case.
- Lehman Brothers, as counsel in its attempts to secure rescue capital prior to Chapter 11, and later as counsel to Barclays as the acquiror of its investment banking business.
- General Growth Properties, as counsel to Pershing Square, the largest shareholder, and Fairholme Capital, the largest creditor, in the reorganization of General Growth Properties.
- CIT Group, as counsel to the board and, subsequently, company in the largest pre-pack ever completed.
- The Weinstein Company, as counsel to the company in its successful out-of-court restructuring.
- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as counsel to Fairholme Capital and other investors in pending efforts to consensually reprivatize the guarantee business of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- Arcapita, as counsel to the company in its global restructuring and subsequent entry into Chapter 11.
- MF Global, as counsel in its attempted rescue sale.
- Los Angeles Dodgers, as counsel to Frank McCourt in the court-supervised $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers franchise out of Chapter 11 to Guggenheim Baseball Management.
- Yell Group, as counsel to coordinating committee of distressed funds in its £2.8 billion restructuring.
- Republic of Argentina, as counsel to the international dealer-managers in the $102.5 billion sovereign debt restructuring involving 24 jurisdictions and bondholder litigation in the United States and Europe.
