Cross-Border Bankruptcy Issues 2019

Lisa M. Schweitzer is a senior bankruptcy and restructuring partner in Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP’s New York office, where her practice focuses on financial restructuring, bankruptcy and commercial litigation, including cross-border matters. She has experience advising corporate debtors, individual creditors and strategic investors in both U.S. chapter 11 proceedings and restructurings in other jurisdictions in North America, Europe and Asia.

Ms. Schweitzer has served as lead counsel in some of the world’s most high-profile bankruptcy matters across North America, Europe and Asia, advising corporate debtors, creditors and counterparties in U.S. chapter 11 proceedings as well as in restructurings and risk-mitigation advice. She has advised many companies and creditors in various bankruptcy cases, and she has been providing strategic advice to several Fortune 100 U.S. and multinational companies on liquidity and restructuring advice arising from the COVID pandemic. She also continues to advise several leading financing institutions, including UBS and Credit Suisse, in matters relating to their resolution plans.

Ms. Schweitzer has advised clients in some of the most high-profile bankruptcy matters in North America, and her work repeatedly has been recognized by the business and legal press, including Chambers Global, Chambers USA, The Legal 500 U.S., IFLR 1000: The Guide to the World’s Leading Financial Law Firms, The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers and The International Who’s Who of Insolvency & Restructuring Lawyers. She also was honored as one of the “Top 250 Women in Litigation” by Benchmark Litigation and as a “Dealmaker of the Year” and “Dealmaker in the Spotlight” by The American Lawyer.

Ms. Schweitzer received her B.A. magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania and her J.D. magna cum laude from New York University School of Law, where she was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Madlyn Gleich Primoff is a partner with Freshfields Bruckhaus & Deringer LLP in New York and a member of Freshfields’ Finance and Risk Committee. She has more than 25 years of experience representing lending groups, global financial institutions, creditors’ committees, private-equity funds and hedge funds in contentious chapter 11 cases, out-of-court insolvency matters, workouts and restructurings, pre-arranged chapter 11 cases, and related litigation matters. She also has substantial cross-border insolvency experience, including chapter 15 cases and parallel proceedings.

Ms. Primoff is regularly called upon by her clients to act as “first chair” trial counsel in contentious restructuring matters and insolvency-related litigations. She has expertise in metals and mining, energy and infrastructure, consumer products, financial services, agriculture, entertainment, media, communications, shipping and health care, including device manufacturing and distribution.

Ms. Primoff is ranked as a leading attorney in Chambers USA, The Best Lawyers in America and Expert Guides – Women in Business Law. She has also been named the “Best in Insolvency and Restructuring” – Americas Women in Business Law Awards (2016) by Euromoney.

Ms. Primoff received her B.A. magna cum laude from Cornell University and her J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.

Mr. Morris is a Managing Director at HPS Investment Partners.

Prior to joining HPS in 2018, Mr. Morris was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where he held various roles in New York and London, including Head of EMEA Distressed Research and Co-Head of EMEA Distressed Trading.

Prior to Goldman Sachs, Mr. Morris was a Managing Director at Merrill Lynch on the Global Distressed Trading and Investing desk in New York. Prior to that, Mr. Morris was a corporate restructuring attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where he represented debtors, senior lenders, and distressed investors in complex corporate restructuring and cross-border transactions.

Mr. Morris holds a BA from Rutgers University and a JD from Rutgers Law School.

Robin Chiu has extensive experience providing financial advisory services to clients across a broad array of industries.

In restructuring matters, Robin has been active in both company and creditor side engagements. She currently serves as the Chief Restructuring Officer of Ezra Holdings and is a key advisor to debtors in the China Fishery and Zohar matters. She also led Goldin's team advising the Big Apple Circus on its restructuring and helped Pulse Electronics with its out-of-court recapitalization. Robin has been active in significant committee and creditor support matters, including Caesars, FiberTower, Puerto Rico, Detroit and Tribune Co.

Robin is also active in Goldin's litigation support and fiduciary practices, performing valuations and other complex financial analyses for counsel in various matters and participating in the leadership team of Goldin’s Ocwen Financial monitorship.

Prior to joining Goldin, Robin worked as an investment banker at Barclays Capital, where she advised clients on financing, capital structure and risk management. She began her career in the capital markets group at Wasserstein Perella, working on high yield transactions, exchange offers and other balance-sheet transactions.

Bill Brandt has been in the business of workout, turnaround and insolvency consulting for more than 45 years and is widely recognized as one of the foremost practitioners in the field. He is the founder and Executive Chairman of DSI.

For more than 45 years, Bill Brandt has been a fixture on the national stage in the fields of business, civic and political endeavors. A talented business strategist and political counselor, he is the founder and Executive Chairman of Development Specialists, Inc., better known worldwide as DSI and widely recognized as one of the foremost firms in the corporate restructuring industry. While Mr. Brandt and his firm have been and continue to be involved in some of the most celebrated and complex restructuring and insolvency matters in the arenas of business and government reorganization, for example, Mr. Brandt currently serves as the Chapter 11 Trustee in the largest cross-national insolvency pending in the United States, China Fishery Group, the firm also lends its expertise to other matters in the broader economic and political realms. An example of that was Mr. Brandt’s stewardship and resolution of the infamous Ohio “Coin Fund” scandal at the request of the Attorney General of the State of Ohio.

In 2015, Mr. Brandt finished his third consecutive term serving as Chair of the Illinois Finance Authority, having first been appointed by the Governor in 2008 and confirmed unanimously by the Illinois Senate that same year, and then subsequently reappointed as Chair in 2010 and 2012. The IFA is one of the nation’s largest state-sponsored self-financed entities principally engaged in issuing taxable and tax-exempt bonds, making loans and investing capital for business, nonprofit organizations and local governments. Mr. Brandt, again by gubernatorial appointment, was also a member of the Illinois Broadband Deployment Council, whose mission is to ensure that advanced telecommunications services are available to all of the citizens of Illinois. He is also part of the ownership group that controls Chicago’s second-largest daily newspaper, The Chicago Sun-Times. More recently, in the political realm, Mr. Brandt was a member of the United States Electoral College for the 2016 Presidential Election, serving as an Elector from the State of Illinois.

Mr. Brandt has advised Congress on matters of insolvency and bankruptcy policy, and in that capacity was the principal author of the amendment to the Bankruptcy Code permitting the election of trustees in Chapter 11 cases. He was involved in drafting several amendments to the Bankruptcy Code revisions enacted into law in April 2005 as part of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which substantially rewrote the nation’s bankruptcy laws. Mr. Brandt also served as a member of the Commission empaneled by the American Bankruptcy Institute several years ago to address the reform of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code and the nation’s corporate restructuring regime.

Referred to several years ago by one media outlet as one of the ten most influential political figures in Illinois, Mr. Brandt was a member of the President’s National Finance Board during the Clinton administration, and was elected a Delegate from the State of Florida to the 1996 Democratic National Convention. During that decade as well, and upon the invitation of business and political leaders in the People’s Republic of China, Mr. Brandt worked with various public policy, law and banking leaders in China on approaches to the reorganization and restructuring of some of that nation’s state-owned industries. In 2000, he was a member of the Democratic Party’s National Convention Platform Committee, and in 2002, he served on the Illinois Gubernatorial Transition Team, as well as on the State of California’s business delegation dispatched to Cuba to discuss politics, business and trade potential. In 2008, Mr. Brandt was again elected a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention, this time from the State of Illinois.

As part of his longstanding commitment to higher education and to civic endeavors, Mr. Brandt chaired the National Advisory Council for the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, serving a total of 12 years, from 2006 to 2018, as a member or chair of that board. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of Loyola University Chicago from 2007 to 2016, and is a Life Trustee of Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Illinois. Mr. Brandt is also a member of the Board of Directors of New York-based The Honorable Tina Brozman Foundation for Ovarian Cancer Research (Tina’s Wish).

Mr. Brandt served several terms as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Bankruptcy Institute, as well as also serving, for a number of years, as a member of the Advisory Board for that organization’s Law Review. He is a member of the Board of Advisors for the ABI’s annual New York City Bankruptcy Conference, having earlier served for 15 years in a similar capacity for the ABI’s Bankruptcy Battleground West Seminar held each year in Los Angeles. Mr. Brandt was a member of the Executive Committee of the Bankruptcy Section of the Commercial Law League of America and served on their National Government Affairs Committee, as well as completing three terms as a member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Bay Area Bankruptcy Forum.

Mr. Brandt is active in the industry internationally, and is a member of the International Insolvency Institute, as well as INSOL, and is a U.S. Participant in the 100-member cross-border consortium known as the International Exchange of Experience in Insolvency.

For 20 years, Mr. Brandt was a member of the private Panel of Trustees for the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and briefly served as a member of the same panel for the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida in the late 1980s.

Mr. Brandt has written for publications spanning a broad spectrum of thought, ranging from Maclean’s, Canada’s Weekly Newsmagazine, to Directors & Boards, Corporate Board Magazine, the Florida Real Estate Journal, and the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Law Review, published in conjunction with St. John’s University School of Law. He is the co-author of the “Due Diligence” chapter in the 2nd edition of Bankruptcy Business Acquisitions published by the American Bankruptcy Institute. He is a frequent lecturer and speaker on topics of corporate restructuring, bankruptcy and related public policy issues and regularly appears on CNN, CNBC, CNNfn, Bloomberg, Canada’s BNN, and the Arise America news network, as well as the CBS Radio and National Public Radio networks. He has been profiled and interviewed in a wide array of periodicals including, among others, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Business Week, The Miami Herald, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, Billboard Magazine and Bank Bailout Litigation News.

Among many other professional and trade organization memberships, Mr. Brandt is a member of the National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees, the International Council of Shopping Centers and the Urban Land Institute. His biography appears in a number of reference works including Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry, and Who’s Who in American Law. For well more than a dozen years, his firm, Development Specialists, Inc., has been rated as one of the Outstanding Turnaround Management Firms in the world by the publication Turnarounds & Workouts, and he is routinely listed on annual rosters of the country’s top restructuring advisors. Mr. Brandt received his B.A. from St. Louis University and his M.A. from the University of Chicago, where he also completed further post-graduate work toward a doctoral degree.

Jennifer C. DeMarco is a partner in the Banking and Finance practice of Clifford Chance US LLP in New York and leads the financial restructuring practice in the U.S.

She primarily represents foreign and domestic financial institutions in U.S. and international debt restructurings and bankruptcies. Complementary to her corporate restructuring experience, she is also an experienced bankruptcy court litigator, having appeared in bankruptcy courts throughout the U.S. Ms. DeMarco is listed in Who’s Who in American Law and Who’s Who of American Women, and she has been recognized by Legal 500 US.

She received her B.A. from Lafayette College and her J.D. from Fordham University.

Hon. Sean H. Lane is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York in New York, sworn in on Sept. 7, 2010. He clerked for Hon. Edmund V. Ludwig, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, from 1991-92, as well as for Hon. Charles R. Richey, U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia, from 1992-93. From 1993-97, he practiced with the law firm of Baker- Hostetler in Washington, D.C., and thereafter served as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice, Civil Division, National Courts Section, until 2000. From 2000 until he was appointed to the bench, Judge Lane served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and was also chief of the Tax & Bankruptcy Unit of that office. During his time in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, he was awarded the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award in 2005 and the Henry L. Stimson Medal by the New York City Bar Association in 2008.

Judge Lane is a member of the Federal Bar Council and has served as an adjunct professor at both New York University School of Law and Fordham Law School.

He received his B.A. from New York University College of Art & Science in 1987 and his J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1991.

Jasmine Ball is a corporate partner and member of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP’s Business Restructuring & Workouts Group in New York and regularly represents debtors, investors, creditors and other parties in distressed mergers & acquisitions, workouts, debt and equity financing and refinancing, complex restructurings and chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. She is recognized by The Legal 500 US and IFLR 1000, and was among the winners of M&A Advisor’s 2017 “Restructuring Deal of the Year ($1B to $5B)” for her role as aircraft counsel to CHC Group in its successful chapter 11 proceedings.

Ms. Ball was among the winners of Turnaround Management Association’s 2018 “International Restructuring of the Year” and Global M&A Network’s “Turnaround Atlas Awards 2018 Corporate Turnaround of the Year.” In addition, she received the Turnaround Management Association’s 2014 “Transaction of the Year: Mega Company Award” for her role in advising American Airlines and AMR as special aircraft counsel in their highly successful chapter 11 proceedings.

Ms. Ball was named a 2015 recipient of the “Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business” awards and recognized as an “Outstanding Young Restructuring Lawyer” (2013) by Turnarounds & Workouts. She is a member of the Bar of the State of New York and is admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Ms. Ball received her B.S. in civil engineering and operations research in 1996 from Princeton University, with a certificate in engineering and management systems, and her J.D. in 1999 from the University of Michigan Law School, where she was an executive editor of its Journal of International Law.