Bankruptcy Trends: Sales and Restructuring

Tracey provides sophisticated counsel and advocacy to creditors and Chapter 7 and 11 trustees. She is known for her ability to explain complicated issues to clients and easily distill complex concepts.

Tracey represents the full range of clients typically found in bankruptcy cases and state court insolvency proceedings. She has particularly deep experience with telecommunications, banking, health care, real estate and nonprofit industries. Her robust knowledge of bankruptcy avoidance action defense strategies is an asset to her clients.

A committed advocate for her clients, Tracey regularly represents secured creditors, large unsecured creditors, and utilities in Chapter 7, Chapter 9, Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings.

Aided by her work for bankruptcy trustees, Tracey has extensive experience obtaining results in the best interest of creditors in a variety of insolvency contexts, including bankruptcy sales, reorganizations, and out-of-court dissolutions.

She is a frequent author and presenter, most recently in Clark’s Secured Transactions Monthly.

Tracey is committed to pro bono in the Washington, DC area. She is a member of the firm’s pro bono committee, organizes the firm’s work with the D.C. Bar Pro Bono Center’s Advocacy & Justice Clinic, and is a faithful Clinic volunteer representing pro bono clients in housing, family, and disabilities matters.

Steven F. Agran has over 20 years of experience providing turnaround and interim management services to financially distressed companies. He provides financial and operational advisory services to company ownership, Boards of Directors, private equity groups, lenders and investors focusing on workouts, loan restructurings, strategic planning, bankruptcy, and mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Agran works with company management to develop and implement business plans that create profitable growth and increase enterprise value.

Mr. Agran has served in various roles for a myriad of companies, including Chief Restructuring Officer, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Advisor. His engagements have encompassed turnarounds, operational and financial restructurings, liquidations, cash management, operational and financial assessments, due diligence and examinations, and Chapter 11 reorganizations and §363 sales.

Mr. Agran’s wide range of industry experience has included trucking & transportation, distribution, food production & services, consumer products, manufacturing, business services, retail, and healthcare. He has also advised many family run businesses as they worked through transition periods.

His recent experience includes serving as CRO of Dell’s Maraschino Cherries, overseeing the transition during a Brooklyn DA investigation, CFO of a start-up Beef slaughter and fabrication company, implementing policies and procedures, creating accounting tracking and measurement systems and providing integral advisory on strategy and planning. He has served as interim CEO and CFO of an $80 million artificial flower design, sales and distribution company, CRO to a supplemental education company settling disputes between Equity and Lender. He has implemented a safety program, equipment procurement, tracking and monitoring systems for a $250 million trucking company emerging from bankruptcy. He oversaw the planning, bankruptcy and wind-down of Jevic Transportation, Inc. and provided management consulting and merger integration services for a $300 million health care organization.

Prior to joining Carl Marks Advisors, Mr. Agran was a Principal at Morris Anderson LLC. He has also been a turnaround advisor at Addition Management, Glass & Associates and Nightingale & Associates. He began his career with PriceWaterhouse in New York City.

Mr. Agran earned a BBA from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He is a CPA (inactive), TMA Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP) and a Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor (CIRA). Mr. Agran is also the President of the New Jersey Turnaround Management Association, on the Board of Directors of Global TMA and former co-chair of the TMA Mid-Atlantic Symposium.

Mark is the managing partner of the Wilmington office and co-chair of the firm's Bankruptcy, Insolvency & Restructuring Practice.

Mark has a broad commercial practice, focusing in the areas of Chapter 11 reorganization and general insolvency law for almost 30 years. He has represented all constituencies in corporate restructurings and insolvencies both in and out of Chapter 11, including debtors, unsecured creditors' committees, plan trustees, secured creditors, trade creditors, landlords, equipment lessors, reclamation creditors, insurance companies, and equity security holders, as well as acquirers of troubled businesses.

Mark’s practice includes, in large part: (i) counseling debtors through non-judicial restructurings and Chapter 11 proceedings; (ii) advising unsecured creditors’ committees in Chapter 11 proceedings; and (iii) representing trustees in complex Chapter 7 cases.

Mark is a certified mediator for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and maintains an active mediation practice. He has been appointed to serve as mediator in several hundred proceedings over the past dozen years and has successfully mediated more than 100 matters, including WARN litigation, breach of fiduciary duty actions, avoidance litigation, and claim disputes. .

Mark is certified by the American Board of Certification in business bankruptcy and is AV-rated by Martindale-Hubbell. He has been designated as a Super Lawyer in both Delaware and Pennsylvania, and has been listed in Chambers & Partners USA as a leading bankruptcy lawyer in Delaware since 2005. He is also included in The Best Lawyers in America for Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law. Mark is a co-author and editor of Representing the Creditors’ Committee: A Guide for Practitioners, published by the American Bankruptcy Institute. In addition, he is president-elect and a Board member for the Philadelphia/Wilmington Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association; and served as the co-chair of the TMA’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Symposium for 2017 and 2018. Mark is on multiple committees for the American Bankruptcy Institute and recently served as the co-chair of the Unsecured Trade Creditors’ Committee. Mark also serves on the Delaware Local Rules Committee and the Board of the American Board Certification.

Mark graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology, with high honors in 1985, and received his J.D. in 1989 from Boston University.

Hon. Brendan L. Shannon is the Chief Judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in Wilmington, appointed as judge in 2006. He manages a full chapter 11 docket and also handles all chapter 13 consumer bankruptcy cases filed in Delaware. In 2015, Chief Judge Shannon was appointed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts to serve on the Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System, which advises the Judicial Conference of the United States on matters relating to consumer and corporate insolvency, and bankruptcy policy.

Prior to his appointment to the bench, he was a partner with Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP in Wilmington, where he specialized in representing large corporate debtors and official committees in chapter 11 cases. Chief Judge Shannon is a member of the Delaware and American Bar Associations, ABI and the Rodney Inns of Court, and is also a member of the board of directors of the Delaware Council on Economic Education. He is also an adjunct professor of law in the LL.M. in Bankruptcy program at St. John’s University School of Law and at Widener School of Law in Delaware, and is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference and serves on the board of editors of Collier on Bankruptcy, the advisory board for the ABI Law Review, and the editorial board of the American Bankruptcy Law Journal.

Chief Judge Shannon received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his J.D. from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary.