The Contributors Speak Up

Introducing the Creditor Coalition Contributors

This group of top restructuring lawyers, financial advisers, investment bankers, investors and law professors will examine timely financial and restructuring topics and share their insight, bringing light to complex and important issues.

Read on to meet the Contributors and the topics they'll tackle.

Rachel Ehrlich Albanese is a nationally recognized Partner and Co-Chair of the U.S. Restructuring Practice at the global law firm of DLA Piper. She has more than 20 years' experience representing secured and unsecured creditors, debtors, equity holders, purchasers of distressed assets, and other parties in interest in a wide range of restructuring matters, including cases under chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code, out-of-court workouts, and cross-border insolvency proceedings. In addition, she has been involved in the current restructuring efforts in Puerto Rico since the earliest days when she participated in dozens of meetings with U.S. Congress members and staff to develop the law that ultimately became PROMESA.

Ms. Albanese is a co-chair of the Women in Bankruptcy & Restructuring affinity group of the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL). She was selected by Crain’s New York Business as a 2022 Notable Woman in Law and is recognized by Chambers and Partners for Bankruptcy and Restructuring in New York. She is an active member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, the International Women's Insolvency & Restructuring Confederation and the Turnaround Management Association, among others. She is a contributing author of the Bloomberg Law: Bankruptcy Treatise.


Rachel Albanese

Philip Anker is Co-Chair of Wilmer Hale’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group. He is an experienced bankruptcy litigator and counselor who has practiced for more than 30 years in the field. Among other honors, he has been inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. Mr. Anker has been selected as one of the “Best Lawyers” in Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law in Best Lawyers in America each year since 2005. In the 2020 edition, Best Lawyers in America named him "Lawyer of the Year" in the area of Litigation - Bankruptcy.  He is also listed in the 2012-2021 editions of Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business for his Bankruptcy/Restructuring work; the 2010-2021 editions of Benchmark Litigation, which have rated him as a “National Star” and “Top 10 Practitioner” for bankruptcy law; and in the 2020-2021 editions of Lawdragon as one of the nation's 500 leading bankruptcy lawyers.

Recent cases in which Mr. Anker has played a leading role include Boy Scouts, Grupo Aeromexico, Intelsat, Mallinkrodt, Sears, and Tribune.


Philip Anker

Martin Bienenstock teaches Corporate Reorganization at Harvard Law School, University of Michigan Law School, and University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and chairs restructuring at Proskauer Rose LLP.  Martin currently leads the representation of the Oversight Board for Puerto Rico.  He has led restructurings of such companies as General Motors, Chrysler Financial, Enron, and Global Marine, and represented creditors such as the Owens Corning commercial creditors, the Caesar Entertainment creditors’ committee and the MF Global creditors’ committee.  Martin authored the treatise Bankruptcy Reorganization and is named one of the 100 Most Influential Attorneys in the United States by the New York Law Journal.


Martin Bienenstock

Amy Caton is Co-Chair of Bankruptcy & Restructuring at Kramer Levin. She has represented investors and creditors’ committees in many of the nation’s largest, most complex and highest-profile bankruptcies for the past 24 years. Chambers USA and Legal 500 recognize her as a leading practitioner, with sources describing her as “well versed in complex and idiosyncratic legal issues,” with “a strong understanding of the deal dynamics,” noting “she is very strategic and outmaneuvers her opponents time and again” (Chambers 2022). Amy has received many professional accolades over her career, including being recognized as a leading lawyer by Chambers USA (2019 – 2023) and Legal 500 US (2010, 2012 – 2020) and being listed in the Lawdragon 500 (2019 – 2023). She was named an Outstanding Restructuring Lawyer by Turnaround & Workouts (2010, 2015, 2018), an American Lawyer Dealmaker of the Year for 2016 and 2017, and an Am Law Litigation Daily Litigator of the Week (Feb. 12, 2015). She was also named a BTI Client Service All-Star (2019) and a Law360 Bankruptcy MVP (2015).


Amy Caton

Mr. Feltman is a Partner in the Restructuring and Finance Group at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. In his cross-disciplinary practice, Mr. Feltman focuses both on acquisitions of leveraged entities in connection with in-court and out-of-court workouts and on the financing aspects of leveraged acquisitions generally, including negotiation, implementation and issuance of credit facilities and debt securities. In 2020, Mr. Feltman was recognized as a Law360 MVP in the bankruptcy area. His recent engagements include advising an ad hoc group of lenders in connection with the bankruptcy of Washington Prime Group and Travelport Ltd. in connection with various capital raise and financial restructuring transactions and related litigation.


Josh Feltman

Justin Forlenza is Senior Covenant Analyst at Covenant Review/Fitch Solutions. He was with Covenant Review from 2012 until 2018 and rejoined Covenant Review in August of 2019. He has practiced law at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and most recently at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Mr. Forlenza has extensive experience with leveraged finance transactions, including the negotiation and execution of credit agreements and bond indentures, issues relating to secured transactions under Articles 8 and 9 of the UCC, LBO financings, and the analysis of complex stressed and distressed capital structures. He graduated from Cornell University in 2003 and from Fordham Law School magna cum laude in 2007.


Justin Forlenza

Elliot Ganz is the General Counsel and Co-Head of Public Policy at the Loan Sales and Trading Association, the industry’s premier platform for all participants in the rapidly evolving syndicated lending market. Since 2005 he has managed all legal issues and co-headed its government policy and advocacy efforts. In 2018 Mr. Ganz was appointed to the additional role of Chief of Staff, responsible for managing the LSTA’s staff and leading its strategic initiatives. Before joining the LSTA Mr. Ganz worked for three years at a Wall Street law firm followed by 22 years in senior legal positions at four major U.S. and international banks. He served as a member of the Committee on Financing Chapter 11 of the American Bankruptcy Institute’s Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11. Mr. Ganz has supervised the filing of over 20 amicus briefs on important loan and bankruptcy-related cases, including three briefs supporting successful appeals to each of the New York Court of Appeals and Supreme Court of the United States.


Elliot Ganz

Mr. Heimowitz is a Member of the Advisory Board of the Creditor Rights Coalition. Mr. Heimowitz is the Founder and Managing Member of Coda Advisory Group, an independent advisory firm that specializes in providing advice to and advocating for parties-in-interest involved in restructurings and special situations. He also acts as an independent director for companies in distress, restructuring and bankruptcy. 

Prior to founding Coda, Mr. Heimowitz was a portfolio manager at Claren Road Asset Management, a long-short credit hedge fund owned by The Carlyle Group. Prior to Claren Road, he was a Managing Director, Head of Credit Special Situations, and Co-Head of the Distressed Trading Desk for Citigroup Global Capital Markets. 

He is a CFA Charterholder, an advisory board member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, a founding advisory board member of the University of Pennsylvania Institute for Restructuring Studies, and regularly publishes and lectures on U.S. and transnational insolvency matters. 


Marc Heimowitz

Sidney Levinson is Co-Chair of Debevoise & Plimpton’s Restructuring Group.  He has extensive experience advising a range of clients, including bondholders, secured lenders, debtors, trustees and creditors’ committees in large and complex restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings, along with out-of-court workouts and liability management transactions.  In addition, Mr. Levinson has served as lead trial counsel in a number of high-profile cases, including representing Hawaiian Airlines in obtaining an $80 million judgment (plus attorney fees of $3.9 million) against Mesa Air Group.   Mr. Levinson is a fellow in the American College of Bankruptcy, previously served as a subcommittee co-chair for the ABA's Business Bankruptcy Committee, and is ranked as a leading restructuring lawyer by Chambers USA.  From 1992 until 1995, Mr. Levinson was a trial attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice (Civil Division), specializing in bankruptcy and commercial litigation.  Recent cases in which Mr. Levinson has played a leading role include Guitar Center, Alpha Media, Barney’s, Hexion and Caesars Entertainment.


Sidney Levinson

Jennifer Marines serves as global vice chair of Morrison Foerster, co-chair of the firm’s global Business Restructuring + Insolvency Group, a member of the Woman’s Strategy Committee, and a member of the Firm’s Finance and Benefits Committee. She has extensive experience in representing chapter 11 debtors, creditors, investors, and other parties in interest in all aspects of complex corporate restructurings, including chapter 11 cases, out-of-court restructurings, and distressed acquisitions. Jennifer is recognized by Chambers USA and The Legal 500 US in the area of corporate restructuring. She has recently been recognized as one of “Top Women in Dealmaking” by The Deal and a “Top Woman Dealmaker” by Global M&A Network. She has also been named an “Outstanding Young Restructuring Lawyer” for 2016–2020 by Turnarounds & Workouts and a “Bankruptcy Rising Star” for 2016 and 2017 by Law360. The American Bankruptcy Institute also honored Jennifer in 2018 as one of their “40 Under 40,” a list recognizing emerging leaders in insolvency practice.


Jennifer Marines

Jim Millar is the co-leader of Faegre Drinker’s corporate restructuring team. Mr. Millar has more than 25 years of experience advising bondholders, acquirers and other participants in corporate restructuring and bankruptcy litigation. He regularly represents bondholders in Chapter 11 cases, enforcing their rights under bankruptcy law, creditors’ rights law and contract law. Bondholders value his ability to develop novel and effective strategies to pursue their rights against well-funded debtors or other stakeholders elsewhere in the capital structure. 

In the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Caesars Entertainment Corporation, Mr. Millar developed and advanced the legal theory under the Trust Indenture Act during his representation of a group of unsecured bondholders. Other law firms subsequently adopted his theory, which heavily influenced the outcome of the case on bondholders’ challenge to Caesar’s attempt to release guarantees of the bonds without their consent. On a related issue in a precedential case, Mr. Millar obtained a favorable reversal from the New York Court of Appeals on behalf of certain minority bondholders on a legal issue under an indenture that incorporated the Trust Indenture Act as a matter of contract. 


Jim Millar

Mr. Sandler is a member of the firm's Management Committee and Long-term Planning Committee, and serves as a co-Chair of the firm’s Committee Practice Group.

He has substantial experience representing debtors, equity and creditors’ committees, acquirers, fiduciaries, and other significant parties in interest in complex reorganizations and financially distressed situations, both in and out of court. While acknowledging that bankruptcy is often a viable business tool to manage liability, Mr. Sandler believes that it is a tool of last resort, and many of his company-side representations are out-of-court. His recent committee representations include Party City, Cineworld, Sungard, Ascena, J Crew, Ditech Holdings, Corsicana Bedding, Rockdale Marcellus, Tuesday Morning, Gymboree II, Payless I and II, Shopko, the Weinstein Company, Bon-Ton Department Stores, Woodbridge Group, BCBG Max Azria, Aeropostale, and Sports Authority. He is ranked among the nation’s top Bankruptcy/Restructuring attorneys by Chambers USA, which states that “he’s exceptionally good at what he does and is unbelievably hard-working” and that “he’s a superb bankruptcy lawyer.”


Bradford J. Sandler

Jennifer Selendy is a founding partner of Selendy Gay Elsberg. Ms. Selendy’s leadership has been recognized by Corporate Counsel, which named her 2020’s “Managing Partner of the Year,” and the New York Law Journal, which lists her among 2020’s "Distinguished Leaders." National Law Journal named Jennifer one of 2022's Elite Women of the Plaintiffs Bar, a small and highly selective list. Crain’s has twice named her one of the “100 Notable Women in Law.”

Ms. Selendy represents both plaintiffs and defendants in high-stakes disputes. In her plaintiffs practice, she is increasingly called on to help clients in disputes related to so-called liability management transactions, such as uptiering transactions, when they are seeking to vindicate their rights as creditors by going to trial. Ms. Selendy also specializes in complex defense work and is frequently tapped for sensitive internal and governmental investigations into antitrust, financial misconduct, and employment-related matters. She has represented private equity and investment companies in precedent-setting litigation, represents renewable energy companies and related interests in cutting edge litigation aimed at protecting competition in power generation for the benefit of consumers, and has extensive expertise in bankruptcy disputes.


Jennifer Selendy

Paul Silverstein is a Partner and Co-head of the Business Practice Group of Hunton Andrews Kurth. He has served multiple terms as a member of legacy Andrews Kurth's Policy Committee, Executive Committee and head of its bankruptcy/corporate restructuring practice.

Mr. Silverstein is a seasoned expert in the bankruptcy/financial restructuring and distressed investing space.

His practice includes the representation of official and ad hoc creditors and stockholders committees, significant strategic and financial investors and debtors/issuers in complex Chapter 11 reorganizations and out-of-court restructurings. He also regularly represents post-reorganization litigation trusts and similar vehicles. He is experienced in the representation of purchasers and sellers of assets, claims and equity interests in distressed and special situations, both strategic and financial, and represents activist investors in both proxy contests and related matters. He has been profiled in multiple publications as a leading corporate restructuring lawyer.


Paul Silverstein

Clifford J. White III is the former head of the Justice Department’s United States Trustee Program (USTP), known as the “watchdog” of the bankruptcy system. Before retiring in 2022, Cliff served as the USTP’s Director for 17 years. During his tenure, the USTP implemented key provisions of the comprehensive Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Prevention Act of 2005 and the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019. He also developed new enforcement strategies to uphold chapter 11 requirements limiting executive bonuses, policing professional conflicts of interest and fees, and scrutinizing improper third-party releases and other controversial practices. Cliff received two Presidential Rank Awards, the highest awards given to career government senior executives, from President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. Cliff currently serves as Managing Director for Bankruptcy Compliance at American Infosource, a Texas-based financial technology firm that provides data management and business process services to the banking and lending industry.


Clifford J. White III

The views of our Contributors should not be attributed to their respective firms or the Creditor Rights Coalition. In addition, the Coalition may take positions as part of its Advocacy efforts that do not necessarily reflect the view of Contributors and should not be attributed to any Contributor.

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Women in Credit: Jamie Zimmerman

A poster with two women and the words " women in credit ".

Jamie Zimmerman is a legendary investor. She started her investing career in the early 80s and has seen it all: from double-digit interest rates, to the great financial crisis, to the current paradigm shift in the debt markets. Her firm Litespeed Partners was a trailblazer, launching in 2000, as one of the first woman-owned hedge funds. Many of her predictions have come true through the years.  So, why has she decided to hang up her shingle managing hedge fund monies after such a successful career to focus on her own family office and relaunch in a different structure? What lessons has she learned? Jamie candidly shared her experience and opinions with Contributor Rachel Albanese below.

Rachel Albanese
Jamie, thank you so much for talking with me today. I have heard your name so many times over the years since I first started in the business, and it’s an honor to talk with you today. Why don’t you tell me about your career trajectory and how you got to where you are today.

Jamie Zimmerman 
I was thinking about what’s going on in today’s restructurings and it’s as if I have come full circle in my career.

When I went to law school, I wanted to be the first woman on the Supreme Court. Sandra Day beat me to it, but during my first summer, I worked for a Supreme Court litigation firm. I was assigned to the Democratic Reapportionment case for New Jersey, and I thought, “This is exactly what I was put on the earth to do.†The standard was “reasonable representationâ€:  like pornography, “you know it when you see it.†It was so loose and vague and left one totally beholden to the judge’s opinion.

I wanted to be right or wrong about something. I wanted to learn a set of rules and apply them to find the right answer. I stated my second-year summer at Stroock in the tax department, but they tried to convince me to be a litigator. They paired Danny Golden with me and kept putting me in the bankruptcy court. There was a Code (it was 1983, so the ’78 Code was fairly new) and the bankruptcy lawyers were doing everything: their own litigation and their own negotiation. They were a sort of a jack of all trades lawyer under the umbrella of the Bankruptcy Code.

I clerked for Bankruptcy Judge Buschman who had a very strong sense of right and wrong. But, after that, I realized law was just not for me. I was more comfortable putting my neck on the line. I polled my Amherst classmates at our 5-year reunion, and, at that time, despite the many doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers, nobody was really having fun except for my friends who were trading bonds. They alone seemed to have good work life balance, while having a lot of fun and making a lot of money.

So, I tried to get a job in sales and trading, and I was fortunate enough to be hired by Michael Gordon in the risk arbitrage department of LF Rothschild before it became Angelo Gordon. I found that my job was to be somewhat of an investigative reporter, but instead of writing an article, I put on a trade. I got lucky. It was really fun. I enjoyed going to work; I was both a bankruptcy and arbitrage analyst. Usually when credit is easy, you focus on arbitrage and when it gets tight, the buyers who have taken on too much debt go bankrupt and restructure. Until three months ago, I was still doing the same thing.

Rachel Albanese:
What are you doing differently now?

Jamie Zimmerman:
Coming into 2023, we anticipated that the rise in interest rates and the decrease in the availability of bank credit would create opportunities for us to profit by buying distressed debt. We grew our cash position to take advantage of what we predicted would be rolling waves of corporate refinancings, but over the course of 2023, we were slow to deploy it, given the prevalence of creditor-on-creditor violence. Further changes in the landscape have led us recently to decide that we need a different type of vehicle to take advantage of this cycle.  A locked-up vehicle would enable us to maintain and profit from a diversified portfolio during extended holding periods and to better control the allocation of risk.  Instead of buying distressed or defaulted debt and swapping it for cheap equity, we see profit opportunities in buying entire operating subsidiaries or assets from these structures. Private equity funds will eventually need to deleverage these corporate entities, and spinning off and selling divisions is one way to raise the necessary cash.

Rachel Albanese:
That sounds exciting! So, what would you say has been the key to your success and your longevity in the business?

Jamie Zimmerman:
I love investing, learning and researching the transactions. Intellectual curiosity and an open-minded assessment of what is happening.  I tell my children, that in order to be good at a job, you have to like what you’re doing. You have to find something that is so much fun that you could see yourself doing it for free so that your efforts do not feel like work.

Rachel Albanese:
Yeah, that’s definitely the key to longevity in any job.

Jamie Zimmerman:
I think it’s the key to success. I really don’t think you could fake joy in a job if you don’t have any.  It’s so much fun to invest in the event space or what I used to call “how much and when investingâ€: how much are you going to get and when is so great because you could think something’s cheap in the market, but whether it gets priced more expensively or not, what multiple people pay for, is out of your control. Where interest rates are is a little bit out of your control. If Microsoft is in contract to buy Activision for $95/share, and they can get approval, that’s what you’re going to get. So, when you see Activision trading at $74/share, you can make some sort of analysis as to what the chances are you’re getting $95 and whether the return is a good risk reward over the time period.

There’s more science to it than just being a value investor. We thought of ourselves as value investors with an event overlay. Bankruptcy investing is another one of these events. You buy one thing and then you’re going to get a package of other things, you’re either going to get cash or new bonds worth something or a package of cash, bonds, and equity. And you ask the same question, how much are you going to get and when.

Rachel Albanese:
How has bankruptcy investing changed in recent years?

Jamie Zimmerman:
I think the bankruptcies have completely changed. A couple things have happened.

Number one, when I started, there was a bifurcation in Wall Street between debt and equity. You were either a debt analyst or an equity analyst, and people really didn’t understand how to do both which created a great amount of inefficiency in the price of distressed securities. Over time, that’s changed. People now understand that debt turns into equity.

Number two, when I started, every company had a bank and their interest in these early restructurings or Chapter 11s was to be the bank on the other end, and they cared very deeply about the credit quality of the loans that they had made. The banks kept their loans on their balance sheets and worked with other banks who would continue to be in their syndicate group to help the company get out of Chapter.  Post the fall of Lehman, the government didn’t want banks to take risk. So, banks don’t own debt anymore. These loans are now owned by CLOs, and they don’t have the same team approach. They’re not necessarily on the side of the company, they don’t have a long-term view about being the bank for the company, and they don’t have any allegiance to each other either. The banks worked together; the distressed investors in the days of pro rata distributions and strong covenants were on the same team and talked about how they were going to fix the company to benefit all.

CLOs seem to now work together to jump in front of other secured lenders and wrest value from other CLOs. Without strong covenants, creditor on creditor violence has spawned inequitable, non pro rata distributions.

Rachel Albanese:
Tell me more about how the investments are different now.

Jamie Zimmerman:
As an investor, you could be a value investor with a better security, protected by a strong indenture and collateral. You had a security that protected your interest. It was certainly safer to buy a secured piece of debt and expect to get equity. If you didn’t get your coupon or money back at maturity, you’d take the company into court and you would get paid. You could get the real estate, the art on the wall, and the equity. The risk reward was very, very attractive. These days, most secured paper in the public market has terrible covenants.  Not only are you trying to invest and get a piece of a company that hopefully you’re going to revitalize coming out the other end with better management or better capital structure, but you are looking over your shoulder to make sure that someone isn’t taking away the collateral that you thought was yours.

We were involved in Revlon. What is the value of a make-up company other than its brands? You’re going to take the brands out and call them BrandCo and lever them up away from the secured creditors and tell them they never had a security interest in that collateral. You’re kidding me. It’s akin to going to Chase and saying, “Hi, I’m Rachel. I’m going to buy this house in the Hamptons,†getting a mortgage and then realizing you want to put a tennis court in the backyard and don’t have any money. So, you go to Deutsche Bank and you say, “I’d like to borrow against my kitchen for my tennis court.†Deutsche lends you money and Chase goes, knock, knock, knock, “Rachel, what’s that? We are the mortgage owner in your house.†And you say, “Yes, I just took a loan against my kitchen.†And they say, “Wait, we’re the lender on the kitchen. And you say, “No, it doesn’t say kitchen in the document, it just says house.†Chase says, “Wait, every house has a kitchen!†It’s sort of a joke, right? A contract is supposed to describe the deal that’s being struck. But that’s not what’s going on now. Someone might lend as a secured creditor and because of some interpretation of the words of the indenture, they lose their collateral and wind up with something that is not what they bargained for.

As Humpty Dumpty said, words can be interpreted and misinterpreted in any way someone wants. The judges should stand up to this. Bankruptcy courts are courts of equity.

Rachel Albanese:
What do you say to the argument that the company has the fiduciary obligation to engage in these kinds of transactions to lengthen its runway and increase liquidity?

Jamie Zimmerman:
I just don’t see how that system works when it’s based on trying to abrogate contracts. I understand the letter of the law, but the courts should do the right thing. I really am shocked that the courts have not been up in arms about drop-downs and uptiers.  Perhaps there is more pressure to get the cases through, rather than adjudicating them in the right way.

Rachel Albanese:
How has all this changed your view of the distressed investing business?

Jamie Zimmerman:
Things have come full circle for me. I didn’t like the vagaries of court when I started out. That’s why I stopped being a lawyer. Now everyone’s just trying to cheat. If there’s not a willingness to enforce a contract to mean what everyone understood it to mean when it was written, it’s creditor warfare.

The bankruptcy code is a mechanism so that people can be treated equally. The whole policy behind the code was so that you could have an automatic stay and you could look at the assets and people would have their fair share of what is left so that you couldn’t just pay some creditors over others. Look where we are now. 

I don’t think there’s anything good about the world when some implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing is sort of thrown asunder in the name of the words. What do the words say? What about the underlying bargain that was struck? People seem to have decided that it doesn’t matter. And the courts, regardless of being courts of equity, are sticking to strict construction. I am shocked. No matter how good your lawyering is, there’s some other lawyer who’s going to interpret it another way and some judge who will interpret their way.

The private equity people are now the equity holders and the CLO manager. They do not want to liquidate or file bankruptcy or give up control of the entity.  As a creditor, you don’t really know which side you’re going to wind up with, and whether you’re going to wind up underneath a bunch of other debt without your collateral, or whether you’re going to wind up in the group that is prioritized.

That’s not really investing but litigation warfare. It’s been going on here and there for some time, but without banks and with toothless covenants, half of one’s day as a distressed investor is spent looking for the bomb shelter rather than analyzing how to take each company out of Chapter with the best structure and management to thrive in the future.

For the moment, companies are coming out of Chapter too levered. Who wants to own any of these things? The move to deleverage has been put to the side in the name of kick the can down the road. Many will need to refile. 

Rachel Albanese:
You’ve been prescient in your investments over the years. I was looking back at some of your earlier quotes, and for example, in 2005, in a Wall Street Journal article, you anticipated correctly that there would be consolidation in the airline industry, the death of Kodak, the eventual demise of Rite Aid, and other things. And then again, in 2022, you predicted correctly that the SPAC situation would implode. What tipped you off? How did you know that SPACs were not going to continue the same way that they had in 2021 and 2022?

Jamie Zimmerman:
You could see toward the end, the SPAC projections were insane. They looked like crazy hockey sticks based on nothing. That always happens at the end of a cycle. Bankers are selling debt or equity or a company, a banker is not an investor.

Rachel Albanese:
What gives someone an edge when they are analyzing what is going to happen in a company or industry?

Jamie Zimmerman:
Obviously one of the most important things is competitive landscape. From the company’s perspective:  How do you make your money? Who’s paying you? Why are they paying you? Are they going to keep paying you? Does the client or customer need to buy what you are selling them or is it discretionary?

Who is showing up and doing what you’re doing better or doing what you’re doing worse? What’s the cost structure of your business? We always thought of ourselves as value investors with an event overlay. We didn’t do anything different from anyone else who analyzed a company.

Are there moats to your business? Do you have a supply of what you need that you’re getting at an inexpensive price?

One of the things I always teach the people at Litespeed to focus on is the people. The motivation of management is everything. If you see how someone’s paid, they will generally do what you would expect them to do as motivated by their payment structure. If they’re paid when the company is sold and they’re not paid when it’s not, well, they will go sell the company. If they get paid to increase the EBITDA of the company and they don’t get paid really to just blow it out to someone else, well, that’s what they try to do.

Rachel Albanese:
We’re doing this in March, which is women’s history month, so I think I should note that not many women run hedge funds. What has been your experience in that respect, and how has it changed from when you founded Litespeed in 2000?

Jamie Zimmerman:
It used to be the understanding that if you had a kid, you’re going to be out of the workforce. I think that has changed. So that’s a big deal. I think women now are allowed to talk about having a family without being marginalized. In 1995, I asked to run a fund investing in post-reorg stocks. I was pregnant at the time. I knew that if they found out, the firm was not going to give me the money. So not only did I keep it a secret, I didn’t even tell my mother I was pregnant because the head of the firm was a neighbor in my mother’s community. I called the fund the JZ equity fund so when they found out I was pregnant, they wouldn’t say it was Bill’s fund. When they did find out I was pregnant, one of the owners of the firm came over to the trading desk and asked me if it was a mistake. I hope that wouldn’t happen today.

There are many more women in business school. There are more women in law school. The more women that are in business school, the more women are going to be on a trading desk. It’s going to all follow, but it’s been slow. All that being said, I know that one of the large investment banks on their summer outing in a department where they had one woman, they played touch football. And that’s recent.

And in another example, about three years ago, I got invited to a women’s golf and tennis day for a major investment bank. One of the guys from the bank was wearing a hat from one of the great clubs of South Hampton. I said, “Oh, are you a member of so and so club?†And he said, “Oh, no, we had our outing there yesterday.” And I said, “I played there last week.†He said, “Oh, then I’ll play with you today.†So, the next year, they have the outing again, and they ask me to come. And I said, “Well, where is it? Because you had the men’s outing at so and so club, and you had the women’s outing at this bullshit club.†So I told them, I’m not going unless you have the women’s outing at a commensurate golf club. And they didn’t. And I didn’t!

But, in general, it never occurred to me that I was a girl when I was working. It just never occurred to me. I was just doing my thing. And I remember interviewing at a large firm, actually, and having a woman close the door and say, I guess you want to know what it’s like to be a woman at this firm. And I was sort of flabbergasted. I actually wasn’t thinking about that. It never occurred to me to ask that.

Rachel Albanese:
Any closing advice for junior investment professionals—male or female—about how to succeed?

Jamie Zimmerman:
I have always believed that playing sports was very helpful in preparing oneself for the working world. I think if you play athletics as a kid, you realize that it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about getting up after you lose competing and playing again. If you lose the game, you could win the match. You have to just get up and keep going. Dust off after the failures, learn from them and take them in stride. You have to be comfortable losing and experiencing the agony of defeat so that you can go on to taste the thrill of victory. 

Growing up, my dad coached all these sports teams between fourth to eighth grade. And at one of our high school reunions, at least four women came up to me to tell me that my dad sort of changed their lives because their fathers didn’t think sports were very important for girls. But my father obviously did. I do think there’s a lot to that.

Rachel Albanese:
That’s a great metaphor for business and a good note to end on. You have to keep going despite having losses along the way, but ultimately, you hope that the wins outnumber the losses.

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Special Feature: Liability Management Whack-a-Mole

Women in Credit

Let’s Examine Examiners

CRC Reports on Purdue Pharma in AIRA Journal

Special Feature: Committee Standing

Andrew Dunlap & Samuel Kwak Speak on Incora decision shocker

Dan Kamensky Speaks on Incora decision shocker

Special Feature: Disqualified Lender provisions in the Spotlight

Special Feature: Venue Reform in the Spotlight

Special Feature: Purdue Pharma @ SCOTUS

Cliff White Speaks Up on Needed Bankruptcy Reforms

The Academics Speak Up on Purdue Pharma

Prof. Ralph Brubaker Speaks Up on Purdue Pharma

Prof. Tony Casey Speaks Up on Purdue Pharma

Prof. Samir Parikh Speaks Up on Purdue Pharma

What to expect in the next default cycle

Special Feature: Third Party Releases After the Second Circuit Decision in Purdue Pharma

Philip Anker Speaks on the Purdue Pharma decision

Martin Bienenstock Speaks on the Purdue Pharma decision

Contributors

Rachel Albanese Phil Anker Jeffrey Cohen David Feldman Elliot Ganz Marc Heimowitz Dan Kamensky Evan Lederman Sidney Levinson Jim Millar Hon. Richard Schmidt Brian Resnick Damian Schaible Paul Silverstein