Curbside Restructurings: Distress in Restaurants and Retail

Jonathan M. Tibus, CIRA, CDBV is a managing director with Alvarez & Marsal in Atlanta, where he specializes in developing and implementing performance-improvement and restructuring plans for underperforming companies. He has more than 24 years of experience in interim management and financial advisory roles, primarily in the restaurant and retail industries, and has managed numerous in-court and out-of-court restructuring efforts.

Mr. Tibus has served in a number of recent interim-management roles wherein he had overall strategic, financial and operational responsibility for stabilizing the companies and managing their restructuring processes. He also has experience advising lenders, creditors and other stakeholders, and has served as restructuring advisor to the lenders of Garden Fresh and e-brands restaurants, advisor to franchisees of Wendy’s and various YUM! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, A&W, LJS), and advisor to the unsecured creditors’ committee of a chain of furniture retail stores. In these roles, he has provided operational analysis and restructuring advisory, including detailed operating analyses, overhead analyses and bankruptcy-related analyses to help frame and manage negotiations.

Over his career, Mr. Tibus has worked with clients across a broad range of industries, including retailing, restaurants, health care, construction, and general manufacturing of textiles, carpet, steel, tobacco and heavy equipment. Prior to joining A&M, he was a manager in the restructuring practice of a Big Five consultancy.

Mr. Tibus is a member of ABI, the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors (AIRA) and the Turnaround Management Association (TMA). He received his bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and his M.B.A. from the University of Florida.

Teri L. Stratton, CIRA is a managing director with Piper Sandler Companies restructuring group, TRS Advisors in El Segundo, Calif. Prior to joining Piper Sandler in 2010, she spent 10 years at Macquarie Capital Advisors (and predecessor firms) in the restructuring group.

Prior to her investment banking career, Ms. Stratton had eight years of experience in corporate banking, serving in both credit administration and special assets. She is a Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor, a board member of the Turnaround Management Association, and a member of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Association and ABI.

Ms. Stratton received her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles and her M.B.A. in finance with honors from the Anderson School at UCLA.

J. David Folds is a corporate restructuring and bankruptcy shareholder with Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC in Washington, D.C., and devotes a considerable portion of his bankruptcy practice to representing commercial and retail landlords in chapter 11 reorganization proceedings. In 2020 and 2021, he represented numerous landlords in national retail cases filed in Delaware, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Southern District of Texas and elsewhere. He also represents franchisors and franchisees in reorganization proceedings.

Mr. Folds was recognized in Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers for Business Bankruptcy in 2020. He serves as the pro bono shareholder in Baker Donelson’s Washington, D.C., office and as a board member of the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.

Mr. Folds clerked for Judge William L. Stocks, Chief Judge for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. He holds degrees from the University of the South and the London School of Economics and Political Science, and he received his J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Jonathan T. Edwards is a partner with Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta in its Financial Restructuring & Reorganization Group. He represents various clients in corporate, finance and litigation matters, including complex bankruptcy cases, workouts, receiverships and assignments for the benefit of creditors, debt restructurings, distressed acquisitions and dispositions, financings and recapitalizations, and commercial litigation.

Mr. Edwards focuses his practice on assignments combining financial and operational restructuring advice with transactional and major litigation work. He represents distressed purchasers, debtors and other parties in bankruptcy sales; private and alternative credit lenders and financial institutions; unsecured creditors; CDO, CLO, CMBS, RMBS and indenture trustees; CMBS master and special servicers and collateral managers; and defendants in avoidance actions, including fraudulent-transfer litigation nationwide.

Mr. Edwards counsels directors, officers and others in complex bankruptcy and commercial litigation. He also helps lead the firm’s opinion committee, advising on bankruptcy structuring issues in leveraged finance, securitization and structured finance transactions. Mr. Edwards is listed in the 2019-2021 editions of The Best Lawyers in America for Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law, and was a 2018 honoree of ABI’s “40 Under 40” program. Since 2015, he has been selected to the Georgia Super Lawyers “Rising Star” list, and in 2019-2021 he was named in Chambers USA for Bankruptcy/ Restructuring – Georgia. In 2017, he received M&A Advisor’s Emerging Leaders Award for his contributions to the turnaround industry.

Mr. Edwards is admitted to practice in New York and Georgia and is an ABI member. He received his B.B.A. in 2005 from Georgia State University and his J.D. in 2008 from Mercer University.

Hon. Michael G. Williamson is Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Middle District of Florida in Tampa, initially appointed as bankruptcy judge in March 2000 and as chief judge on Oct. 1, 2015. He is also an adjunct professor at Stetson University College of Law, where he teaches bankruptcy law, and he co-authored West’s Bankruptcy Law Manual.

Judge Williamson served as a chapter 7 panel trustee from 1977-79 and represented numerous chapter 11 corporate debtors, creditors’ committees and trustees in bankruptcy cases throughout Florida for 20 years afterward. He is a past chair of the Committee on Creditors’ Rights for the Section of Litigation of the American Bar Association, past chair of the Business Law Section of the Florida Bar and its Bankruptcy/UCC Committee, and a Fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy.

Judge Williamson received his undergraduate undergraduate degree from Duke University in 1973 and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.