Twenty-five years of distressed investments, turnarounds, and asset sales across transportation, energy, consumer, telecom, homebuilding, and insurance.
What follows is a partial record. The earliest engagements are listed by name because the names speak for themselves. The most recent are written up in more detail, following a situation, thread, and outcome structure, because the work is closer at hand and the lessons are still live. A meaningful number of engagements aren't here at all, protected by confidentiality.
2024 — Present · Transportation · Restructuring
Titan Transportation
Chief Restructuring Officer
A transportation company hemorrhaging cash — lease costs alone running at $2.5 million per month, equipment exposure mounting, demand collapsing into oversupply. Bankruptcy filed not as a defensive measure but as an offensive one: federal courts used to block creditors from repossessing trucks and trailers that the business needed to operate.
Situation
A transportation industry collapse: reduction in demand met with an explosion in supply. Lease costs alone running at $2.5 million per month. Equipment, balance sheet, and culture all under pressure simultaneously.
Thread
Three moves, in order. Preserve critical equipment by using federal courts to block repossession — without trucks and trailers, no business. Reduce fixed costs: shed roughly 500 pieces of dead and defunct equipment, close down parking lots and facilities. Reposition for growth on a cleaner cost base, with the long work of rebuilding the culture still underway.
Outcome
Equipment preserved. Lease costs cut from $2.5 million per month to under $1 million. Cleaner cost base allowing the company to book revenue and grow off a more efficient footprint. Cultural rebuild ongoing.
“If I have no trucks and trailers, then how am I going to do business? I had to reset all fixed costs.”
2019 — 2020 · Consumer · Transformation
Loot Crate
Chief Transformation Officer
A subscription business in contraction, caught in the structural trap that defines the model: cash arrives early when subscribers prepay, but the delivery obligation lingers when growth stops. Compounded by an attempted insider takeover with a literal written plan, surfaced in discovery.
Situation
A subscription business in contraction with a working capital crisis specific to the model. Cash arrives early when subscribers prepay; delivery obligations remain after growth stops. Compounded by a stakeholder revolt and an attempted insider takeover with a written plan to undermine executives and acquire the business.
Thread
Three converging crises managed in parallel. Renegotiate shipping and product providers under threat. Defer subscriber deliveries to extend runway. Fire the bad actors and stop the takeover. Then run a sale process under the gun.
Outcome
A 35-day sale through Delaware bankruptcy court — never previously achieved in the court’s history. Industry expectation had been 92 to 120 days. Litigation against the bad actors recovered approximately $9 million. Multistate sales tax liability resolved.
“I packaged it in a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am sale. People told me it would take 92, 120 days. I got it done in 35.”
2018 — 2022 · Insurance · Transformation
Quility
Chief Strategy Officer
A single-product, single-channel insurance business that had reached the limits of its own expansion. The work was to transform a high-recruiting agent organization into a diversified, digital-first platform — one capable of competing directly with the modern insurtech market while preserving the agent network that had built it.
Situation
A successful but structurally limited insurance marketing organization, headquartered in the Carolinas, with a strong recruiting engine, deep agent network, and a single-product, single-channel orientation. The business had been recognized for years as one of the country’s fastest-growing private companies, but its growth had plateaued against the limits of the model. The next chapter required a different kind of company.
Thread
Three coordinated moves. Restructure the corporate architecture to separate the agent-facing brand from a new client-facing technology platform. Combine the organization with a complementary partner to broaden product reach, agent base, and operational depth. Build the technology stack — direct-to-consumer applications, instant underwriting, machine-learning lead routing, partner integrations — to position the platform alongside the digital-native insurtech market. Throughout, preserve the agent network that had created the business.
Outcome
A transformed organization: a national distribution force of more than four thousand agents under a unified holding structure, a digital platform serving direct clients alongside agent-led sales, partnerships with leading carriers and insurtech infrastructure providers, and a competitive position in a market the original business had not been built to enter. The business was rebuilt and subsequently sold.
A successful organization that had reached the limits of its own model. The work was to build the company it needed to become next.
2017 · Energy · Special Situations
Energy XXI
Special Situations Advisor
A complete energy complex collapse. The parent company had acquired a more conservative offshore drilling operation and was attempting to consolidate the two into one bankruptcy estate. Bonds from the acquired entity were trading at roughly 1.5 cents on the dollar. Bondholders were resigned to total loss. The legal structure said otherwise.
Situation
A complete energy complex collapse. The parent had acquired a more conservative offshore operation and was attempting to substantively consolidate the two into one bankruptcy estate. Bonds from the acquired entity were trading at roughly 1.5 cents on the dollar — a $300 million issue trading at $4.5 million total.
Thread
The parent did not have the legal right to substantively consolidate. The acquired entity could be peeled back out, kept separate, and run on its own. Original management — fired by the parent — was re-engaged to confirm they would return. The acquired entity held proven reserves; the parent depended on those reserves to fund its drilling. Pulling it out wouldn’t just preserve it. It would destroy the parent’s economics.
Outcome
Settlement at 30 cents on the dollar — on bonds purchased at 1.5 cents. Approximately a 20x return in four months. The bankruptcy court awarded an additional fee enhancement, citing a contribution to resolution it described as immeasurable.
“If I peeled the business out, not only would I keep the business, but I would have completely destroyed theirs.”
2016 — 2017 · Consumer · Liquidation
Performance Sports Group
Chief Liquidation Officer
A rapid sale process that had locked in minimal value for equity holders, designed to clear at just enough to satisfy compliant shareholders. Rather than reopen the sale, the work was to find value in the levers that remained: claims, litigation rights, and a constitutional question that ultimately made bankruptcy court precedent.
Situation
A rapid sale that had been engineered to clear at just enough value to satisfy shareholders willing to take a cheap exit rather than fight for what the assets were worth.
Thread
Work the levers that remained. Resolve $300 million in submitted claims down to $20 million by reading them one by one and rejecting the bogus ones. Pursue litigation rights, including a constitutional bankruptcy court fight that made precedent.
Outcome
Recovery of 54 cents per share for equity holders, after legal and advisory fees. Initial estimate at the start of the case was a range of 48 to 54 cents. Landed at the top of the predicted range.
“Drove value and timing. Timing also matters. If I give you value in seven years, that’s one thing. If I give you value in two years, it’s something else.”
2014 · Aviation · Restructuring
Global Aviation
Restructuring Engagement
An aviation services restructuring through Chapter 11 proceedings. Operations stabilized through the process and a path forward established for the going-concern business.
A legal arbitrage based on established fraudulent conveyance rules. Bonds were trading at one cent on the dollar when the firm took its position. The trade was settled at over sixty cents — a return in excess of fifty times the cost basis.
The largest homebuilder on the West Coast, mid-cycle, overvalued, with bonds trading at twenty to twenty-five cents on the dollar. A close reading of restricted investment covenants in the company’s earliest bonds — covenants set when the company was much smaller, and now far below later issuances — revealed a blocking position no other investor had identified. Approximately $750 million invested across the bond classes; $800 million face accumulated; the company brought to the table.
The transaction was structured to take control without triggering Revlon duty in Delaware. Four of nine board seats and the right to appoint the chief executive. The company was eventually sold to a national homebuilding conglomerate for approximately $2.5 billion.
2007 — 2010 · Telecom · Bond Arbitrage
Nortel
Distressed Investment, MatlinPatterson
A valuation arbitrage against a grossly undervalued asset base. The infrastructure was unfamiliar to most credit analysts, but not to the firm. Roughly $300 million in bonds purchased at fourteen to twenty-four cents on the dollar; sold for approximately $900 million.
2001 — 2004 · Telecom · Distressed Investment
WorldCom
Distressed Investment, MatlinPatterson
The matter that, by professional consensus, formed the modern distressed investing industry. The firm’s position helped establish the playing field on which much of the practice that followed has been conducted.
Engagements not listed here are protected by confidentiality. Inquiries to the practice.
What They Have in Common
Every one of these started the same way.
A document nobody had read carefully enough. A pattern nobody had named. A room full of people managing the proceeding instead of pursuing the result. The work has changed industries, decades, and counterparties. The starting point has not.
