Overview
Attorneys in Foley Hoag’s Bankruptcy & Restructuring practice offer a full range of services to all stakeholders in distressed business scenarios, including secured and unsecured creditors, purchasers of assets, creditors' committees, debtors, trustees, lenders, accounting firms, venture capital firms, private equity and hedge funds, and strategic investors. We have extensive experience in federal bankruptcy cases, state court proceedings, out-of-court restructurings, Chapter 15 and cross-border insolvency proceedings, and bankruptcy-related commercial litigation.
Distressed corporate representations often require a multi-disciplinary approach, and our restructuring lawyers frequently team with Foley Hoag colleagues who specialize in other areas of practice, such as corporate, mergers and acquisitions, debt financing, tax, securities, intellectual property, labor and employment, real estate, and environmental law. We pride ourselves on working proactively to advise on mitigating bankruptcy risks in structuring mergers, financings, acquisitions and settlements. Our collective experience allows us to anticipate insolvency issues and address them through transaction analysis and deal structuring.
Our attorneys have experience in a wide range of industries including:
- Life sciences and healthcare
- High technology
- Manufacturing
- Real estate
- Retail
- Mining
- Financial Services
- Energy and oil & gas
- Gaming, hospitality, and entertainment
- Legal and accounting services
- Media and Telecommunications
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Foley Hoag’s Bankruptcy & Restructuring practice has both national and international reach. Our attorneys regularly appear in bankruptcy courts throughout the United States and work with clients across the world.
Debtor Representation
In Chapter 11 cases, we have helped corporate debtors to re-organize and emerge as productive entities by placing an emphasis on finding creative and cost-effective solutions to their problems, including introductions to potential financing sources, equity partners, and buyers.
Distressed Mergers & Acquisitions
Foley Hoag provides distressed M&A services to parties interested in purchasing assets from, making investments in, or obtaining control of financially troubled entities. We have assisted clients in successful section 363 auctions and sales, as well as investments through plans of reorganization. Attorneys in our Bankruptcy & Restructuring practice have the negotiation and transactional skills necessary to reach and close deals in difficult, often time-constrained circumstances.
Committee Representation
In our representations of creditors’ committees, we provide intensive analyses of the debtors’ financial prospects, with the goal of negotiating a feasible and realistic plan of reorganization. As counsel for creditors’ committees and liquidating trustees, Foley Hoag has employed its litigation experiences to prosecute and defend adversary proceedings involving:
- Fraudulent transfer and other avoidance claims
- Breach of fiduciary duty claims against officers, directors and other insiders
- Lien avoidance and other claims against financial institutions
Claims against professional service firms that rendered services to the debtor.
General Creditor Representation
Our attorneys represent debtor-in-possession lenders, asset-based lenders, strategic lenders and exit finance lenders in court procedures and out-of-court restructurings. To avoid the transaction costs that would otherwise be incurred in court proceedings, we have represented secured creditors in negotiating and documenting forbearance agreements and loan modifications. We have a track record of fashioning creative solutions for even the most problematic defaulted loans, including workouts involving deeds-in-lieu-of-foreclosure, cash-flow mortgages, and equity participations.
We also have a robust opinion practice in all areas of debtor-creditor law, including equitable subordination, true sale and non-consolidation issues.
Our bankruptcy and restructuring team includes experienced litigators who regularly try complex insolvency-related and other business cases in federal and state courts. We represent:
- Creditors in avoidance actions, including in defense of preference and fraudulent transfer claims
- Big Four accounting firms in suits and arbitrations brought by litigation trustees
- Foreign sovereign governments, foreign government-owned businesses, and foreign pension funds when their interests are implicated in a bankruptcy or insolvency matter, or in a related commercial dispute
- Clients in asset-recovery actions both in United States and numerous foreign jurisdictions
In the high-technology and life sciences contexts, many of our clients express concern about the financial viability of entities involved in intellectual property and other licensing transactions. We analyze the risks inherent in such situations and assist our clients in negotiating licenses and other agreements that will protect their rights to the fullest extent possible in the event of a bankruptcy by the counter-party.
