Debtor Focused RX Groups?

I know Lazard and PJT tend to focus on debtor mandates. I've also heard that HL was traditionally creditor focused but has moved toward a more even spit in recent years. Any other places that focus on debtor? What do Evercore, Moelis, Greenhill, and Rothschild focus on?  

10 Comments
 

Historically they have been doing only corporate side to avoid conflict of interest and loose potential clients - this is factual. The cred says EUROPEAN creditors, probably in that case they had 0 relationship with the company so they were okay with doing a creditor mandate for European clients

They might have also changed the policy recently

 

To be honest there isn't this idea of debtor-focused or not; it's more that every bank focuses on trying to get the interesting mandate for each engagement. In my opinion in terms of attractiveness of opportunity/size of fee: 

  1. Debtor
  2. Secured aggressive creditor (i.e. ideally fulcrum security) / new money investor with existing stake in the capital structure
  3. Crossholders / potential outside new money investor
  4. Unsecured creditor group / any other ad hoc group (usually out of the money)
  5. Equityholder / UCC

I would say every RX group out there tries to shoot for an engagement in this order of priority. HL is the only exception - they do a lot of UCCs relative to the other mandates which is helped by the sheer size of their junior pool

 

Disagree on the HL taking UCC mandates, they take a lot of unsecured ad hoc group mandates but incredibly few UCC mandates, I’ve only seen them on two UCC mandates besides Lehman’s

 

Maybe I should've been clearer. HL definitely takes other mandates to the same degree as other RX advisors, but they are the only large RX advisor that I have seen in my 5 years as a RX banker that consistently takes large-scale UCC mandates ($1B+). Other firms like FTI, Dundon, Province I've also seen take smaller-sized UCC mandates. Also, this is by no means a disparaging comment against HL given the complex natures of large UCC mandates. 

My earlier points still stand though. HL took $10MM in UCC fees for Sears while Lazard and M-III (Company advisors) took $56MM. At the end of the day the fee size drives advisors to represent one creditor group / debtor or another. All public filings so feel free to fact check me

 

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