Business

Featuring the regional judges of the Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Conference, this session will strive to answer questions you have on current issues.

This lively panel of bankruptcy judges will debate the most pressing and controversial issues shaping bankruptcy law today. Gain unique insights from the bench on evolving case law, procedural challenges and emerging trends affecting practitioners across the bankruptcy spectrum.

This plenary will consist of small group huddles with judges and fellow attendees to work through case problems.

Private credit has rapidly become one of the most dynamic areas of the capital markets, with significant implications for corporate restructurings and bankruptcy practice. Morgan O’Neill of Sound Point Capital Management will explore how private credit is shaping financing strategies, influencing restructuring outcomes, and redefining the relationships among borrowers, lenders and investors. Attendees will gain insights into current market trends, the opportunities and risks driving private credit, and what these developments mean for the future of distressed investing and restructuring.

Brody Mullins is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and author of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government. A veteran journalist with The Wall Street Journal, he has spent two decades uncovering the intersection of business and politics, exposing scandals that led to landmark reforms. His award-winning reporting has shaped public understanding of corporate influence in Washington, earning him accolades such as the George Polk Award and multiple Everett Dirksen Awards. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Politico and The Atlantic, and he has been featured on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

This keynote will discuss how a health care futures market could help stabilize costs for payers and providers, and will explore various financial tools and incentives that could help make health care more predictable and investable. This in-depth talk also will examine the convergence of biology and technology into investable frontiers in medicine — and steps that practitioners can take now to preserve innovation while helping to fix broken balance sheets.

In today’s volatile commercial real estate market, the intersection of lease law and bankruptcy is more complex than ever. This panel dives into the real-world challenges landlords and tenants face when bankruptcy hits, using recent high-profile cases — including WeWork and a wave of "Chapter 22" retail filings — to examine the growing tensions among market realities, restructuring costs and the Bankruptcy Code.

Liability-management exercises (LMEs) have become common transactions in order for financially distressed companies to obtain financing secured by previously encumbered assets. From uptiers, drop-downs, double dips and pari plus transactions, courts have begun to analyze and rule on the enforceability of LMEs and, in certain instances, their limitations. This panel will analyze various examples of recent LMEs and discuss the repercussions of such transactions from both the borrower and lender perspective.

Despite the potential need to reassess liability management exercise (LME) structuring following the Fifth Circuit’s Serta decision, LMEs will continue to proliferate. Questions remain, though: Should we view LMEs as nothing more than free options for sponsors and a rearranging of deck chairs on a sinking ship? Or can they be a force for good, leading to improved enterprise value and corresponding improved returns to all creditors? If so, how can companies maximize the chances of their LME doing so? This panel will address these questions and more.

This panel discusses the history and evolution of liability-management transactions, including uptiers, drop-downs and double-dips, while providing insights from company, lender and creditor perspectives. The panelists also discuss recent developments and trends following the Serta and Mitel decisions, as well as their perspectives on how these types of transactions will be utilized going forward — and whether they are tools for success or invitations for trouble.