Jane Komsky, a distressed legal analyst, discusses the rising trend of cooperation agreements among creditors with Max Frumes, head of distressed and restructuring. They tackle the fine line between collaboration and anti-competition. The duo draws parallels to the American Needle case against the NFL, questioning if these agreements violate the Sherman Act. Their conversation dives deep into the power dynamics, legal challenges, and implications for distressed companies in the face of these evolving strategies.
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Quick takeaways
Cooperation agreements among creditors help unify their strategies, improving their negotiating power against distressed companies and enhancing overall outcomes.
Legal concerns surrounding these agreements stem from potential violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act, raising issues of anti-competitive behavior and market influence.
Deep dives
Understanding Cooperation Agreements
Cooperation agreements are collaborative arrangements formed among creditors within various tranches of a company's debt structure. They aim to streamline negotiations with distressed companies by aligning the interests of creditors, ensuring that they work as a unified team rather than competing against one another. The increasing prevalence of these agreements reflects a shift in how companies negotiate with creditors, moving away from straightforward offers to more complex exchanges of collateral and new financing terms. As a result, creditors seek to enhance their negotiating power and secure better economic terms in a challenging investment landscape.
The heart of the legal challenge to cooperation agreements lies in the potential violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which addresses anti-competitive behavior. When a significant majority of creditors form an agreement to restrict negotiations with a distressed company, it can limit the company's ability to seek competitive financing options, raising concerns about collusion and unfair market practices. The American Needle case serves as a relevant legal precedent, illustrating how collective actions among creditors could be construed as anti-competitive, potentially drawing scrutiny and legal action. The implications of such cases include the risk of treble damages, which can significantly impact creditors if they are found to be participating in anti-competitive behavior.
Implications for Distressed Companies
Distressed companies face considerable challenges when creditors form cooperation agreements, as these arrangements can severely limit their financing options. The agreements often mean that companies cannot engage with a broader range of potential lenders, effectively creating a closed market where creditors have significant influence over the terms of any financial restructuring. Companies may argue that they have existing contracts with these creditors, which complicates claims of anti-competitive behavior but also makes negotiations more challenging. The growing dialogue around these issues highlights the complex dynamics between creditor cooperation and the need for companies to navigate their options carefully in a constrained financial environment.
Cooperation agreements have taken the LME world by storm, foiling distressed companies' plans to play creditors off of one another to secure a better deal. But are these agreements anti-competitive?
In this week's episode of Cloud 9fin, our global head of distressed and restructuring Max Frumes delves into this quandary with distressed legal analyst Jane Komsky. They compare the use of co-op agreements to a US Supreme Court case that pitted an apparel supplier against the NFL, and look into whether co-op agreements could be considered a Sherman Act violation.
For more detail on this topic, read Jane's analysis and our follow-up Default Notice newsletter on 9fin.com. If you have any feedback for us about this episode, or requests to get involved in the podcast, email us at podcast@9fin.com. Thanks for listening.
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