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- April 2025
- Article
Crisis Interventions in Corporate Insolvency
By: Samuel Antill and Christopher Clayton
We model the optimal resolution of insolvent firms in general equilibrium. Collateral-constrained banks lend to (i) solvent firms to finance investments and (ii) distressed firms to avoid liquidation. Liquidations create negative fire-sale externalities. Liquidations... View Details
- December 2024
- Article
Are Bankruptcy Professional Fees Excessively High?
By: Samuel Antill
Chapter 7 is the most popular bankruptcy system for U.S. firms and individuals. Chapter 7 professional fees are substantial. Theoretically, high fees might be an unavoidable cost of incentivizing professionals. I test this empirically. I study trustees, the most... View Details
- 2024
- Working Paper
The Real Effects of Bankruptcy Forum Shopping
By: Samuel Antill and Aymeric Bellon
Many non-Delaware firms strategically file for bankruptcy in Delaware. Should this "forum shopping" be allowed? This question has motivated six congressional bill proposals over decades of policy debate. Using a novel natural experiment and Census-Bureau microdata, we... View Details
- 2025
- Working Paper
Healthcare Provider Bankruptcies
By: Samuel Antill, Ashvin Gandhi, Jessica Bai and Adrienne Sabety
Healthcare firms are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at record rates. We find that bankruptcies increase healthcare staff turnover, worsen care, and harm patients. Using a difference-in-differences design, we estimate that a bankruptcy filing immediately increases... View Details
- 2023
- Working Paper
Life After Death: A Field Experiment with Small Businesses on Information Frictions, Stigma, and Bankruptcy
By: Shai Benjamin Bernstein, Emanuele Colonnelli, Mitchell Hoffman and Benjamin Iverson
In a randomized control trial (RCT) with U.S. small businesses, we document that a large share of firms are not well-informed about bankruptcy. Many assume that bankruptcy necessarily entails the death of a business and do not know about Chapter 11 bankruptcy, where... View Details
- Article
Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?
By: Samuel Antill
In U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases, firms are either reorganized, acquired, or liquidated. I show that decisions to liquidate often reduce creditor recovery, costing creditors billions of dollars every year. I exploit the within-district random assignment of... View Details
- Article
Weak Corporate Insolvency Rules: The Missing Driver of Zombie Lending
By: Bo Becker and Victoria Ivashina
"Zombie lending"—lending to less-productive firms at subsidized rates—can help banks with misaligned incentives in the short run, but it prolongs economic downturns. We propose that inefficient resolution of insolvency is a significant contributor to this problem. We... View Details
- December 2021 (Revised January 2023)
- Case
Katerra (A)
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
In April 2020, Katerra executives struggled with a series of decisions that would determine the fate of one of the best-funded construction startups in history. Katerra was founded in 2015 by technology-industry executive Michael Marks and commercial real estate... View Details
- June 2021
- Case
uBiome
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann and Olivia Graham
uBiome provided clinical tests that sequenced the DNA of human microbiome samples, providing data on health conditions directly to consumers or to prescribing physicians. Founded in 2012, the San Francisco-based startup raised $105 million from top-tier venture capital... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised January 2021)
- Supplement
The Leveraged Buyout of TXU: (B) Energy Future Holdings
By: Trevor Fetter, Erik Snowberg and Rebecca M. Henderson
This case is designed to support a lively discussion about the relative merits of shareholder vs. stakeholder perspectives in the context of a company that provides a vital public service that has important environmental implications. The 2007 purchase of TXU, the... View Details
- December 2019 (Revised December 2022)
- Case
TXU (A): Powering the Largest Leveraged Buyout in History
By: Trevor Fetter, Erik Snowberg and Rebecca M. Henderson
This case is designed to support a lively discussion about the relative merits of shareholder vs. stakeholder perspectives in the context of a company that provides a vital public service that has important environmental implications. The 2007 purchase of TXU, the... View Details
Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Transformation; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Environmental Sustainability; Business and Shareholder Relations; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Energy Generation; Non-Renewable Energy; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Utilities Industry; Energy Industry; Texas
- 2017
- Working Paper
Investment Timing with Costly Search for Financing
By: Samuel Antill
I develop a dynamic model of investment timing in which firms must first choose when to search for external financing. Search is costly and the arrival of investors is uncertain, leading to delay in financing and investment. Depending on parameters, my model can... View Details
- January 2017 (Revised January 2019)
- Case
The Rise and Fall of Lehman Brothers
By: Stuart C. Gilson, Kristin Mugford and Sarah L. Abbott
With nearly $700 billion in assets, Lehman was the largest U.S. bankruptcy in history. In 2007, Lehman achieved record earnings of over $4 billion on revenues of $60 billion. By September 2008 the fourth largest investment bank in the world was bankrupt. How had a... View Details
Keywords: Bankruptcy; Financial Distress; Accounting Policies; Business Ethics; Financial Reporting; Volatility; Judgments; Financial Crisis; Insolvency and Bankruptcy; Financial Liquidity; Investment Banking; Financial Management; Financial Strategy; Corporate Accountability; Corporate Disclosure; Corporate Governance; Crisis Management; Risk Management; Failure; Business and Government Relations; Ethics; Banking Industry; New York (city, NY)
- Article
The Ownership and Trading of Debt Claims in Chapter 11 Restructurings
By: Victoria Ivashina, Benjamin Iverson and David C. Smith
What is the ownership structure of bankrupt debt claims? How does the ownership evolve though bankruptcy? And how does debt ownership influence Chapter 11 outcomes? To answer these questions, we construct a data set that identifies the entire capital structure for 136... View Details
- 2015
- Working Paper
Cashing Out: The Rise of M&A in Bankruptcy
By: Stuart Gilson, Edith Hotchkiss and Matthew Osborn
The use of M&A in bankruptcy has increased dramatically in recent years, leading to concerns that the Chapter 11 process has shifted toward excessive liquidation of viable firms. In this paper, we argue that the rise of M&A has blurred traditional distinctions between... View Details
Keywords: M＆A; Chapter 11; Distress; Bankruptcy; Mergers and Acquisitions; Insolvency and Bankruptcy
- Article
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the U.S. market fell from 62.6% to 19.8%, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Management Practices, Relational Contracts and the Decline of General Motors
By: Susan Helper and Rebecca Henderson
General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional... View Details
- November 2013 (Revised January 2015)
- Case
Restructuring JAL
By: Malcolm Baker, Adi Sunderam, Nobuo Sato and Akiko Kanno
Hideo Seto, the recently appointed chairman of the investment committee of the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation, must decide whether to push JAL group, Japan's largest airline, into bankruptcy or to act as a sponsor in an out-of-court restructuring. The... View Details
- October 2013 (Revised November 2013)
- Case
Blackstone and the Sale of Citigroup's Loan Portfolio
By: Victoria Ivashina and David Scharfstein
The credit boom that preceded the 2007-2009 financial crisis led to several lending practices that exposed banks to large risks. In particular, when the financial crisis unraveled, there were several billion dollars' worth of leveraged buyout (LBO) loans that were... View Details
- June 2012 (Revised August 2012)
- Case
MF Global: Changing Stripes
By: Clayton Rose, Yasmin Dahya and Jenevieve Lee
Jon Corzine became the CEO of MF Global in March of 2010. Eighteen months later, and in the wake of a massive trade in European sovereign debt, the firm filed for bankruptcy, the 8th largest in U.S. history. As the firm failed it was discovered that over $1.6 billion... View Details