Kirkland & Ellis has emerged because the pre-eminent legislation agency within the US when it comes to restructuring bankrupt firms. One of the explanations could be the manner it makes use of PowerPoint.
In the essential “first-day” hearings, when a federal bankruptcy courtroom decide is assigned and the case kicks off, Kirkland usually makes a slide presentation introducing the fundamental information wanted to clarify the corporate and its disaster to the courtroom.
But extra importantly, this fancy fonts and graphics routine, which doesn’t rely as formal proof, units the tone and the narrative for the way the agency needs the case to unfold for its shopper.
Those PowerPoints are abruptly getting extra consideration. Kirkland is representing two high-profile cryptocurrency firms, Voyager Digital and Celsius Holdings, which have every filed for Chapter 11 safety in current weeks.
On the opening day of every case, Kirkland offered its common slide decks, each of that are publicly accessible. The total themes of each are the identical.
Each of Voyager and Celsius succumbed to the “crypto winter”. However, they each have worthwhile property and prospects, which ought to permit account holders to maximise their recoveries on their presently frozen accounts by way of a reorganisation reasonably than a liquidation.
In the case of Voyager, Kirkland has already submitted a top level view proposal for a brand new Voyager that will likely be publicly traded and owned by present account holders. The choices for Celsius are much less clear however a agency lawyer mentioned in courtroom, “we believe we have some valuable assets to reorganise around”.
It is maybe a moot level that these firms may and even must be resurrected on condition that they only imploded after what each described of their filings as a “run on the bank”.
“Every financial relationship depends on trust,” mentioned Vincent Indelicato, a bankruptcy lawyer at Proskauer Rose. “Once you lose it, you may never win it back.”
But no legislation agency has a greater report of fixing troublesome exercises than Kirkland & Ellis. The Voyager and Celsius instances current the distinctive problem of answering novel authorized questions in regards to the basic nature of crypto, analyzing the conduct of the businesses earlier than the bankruptcy each balanced in opposition to the expense of protracted time in courtroom.
The plight of the 2 firms within reason easy. Both took crypto deposits from hundreds of consumers. Those prospects have been promised double-digit annual yields whereas the businesses took their deposits and used them to make dangerous bets that soured when crypto coin and token costs collapsed this 12 months.
Celsius, for instance, disclosed that on the time of its bankruptcy petition, it had $5.5bn of liabilities however simply $4.3bn of property. They every imposed “gates” that prevented account holders from withdrawing their crypto funds. Weeks later, the bankruptcy filings adopted.
The human fallout is turning into evident as the general public authorized data in every case fill with letters from account holders to the respective judges questioning why they can’t entry their holdings and explaining the injury that is inflicting to their lives.
One core authorized query for the bankruptcy instances is whether or not account holders have a direct declare on the particular crypto that they put into their accounts or if they’re classed as generic unsecured collectors with a declare to the corporate’s remaining pool of property (the latter is the obvious consensus for now).
The advantage of the US bankruptcy system is that each one stakeholders have a voice. Creditor committees are fashioned. The Justice Department weighs in. Judges have to approve reorganisations after funding bankers testify on valuations.
Still, a lot of that choreography will be managed by the debtor’s legislation agency which, whereas employed by the corporate, is meant to work for the advantage of all stakeholders. The tensions, too delicate for a two-dimensional PowerPoint, will quickly turn into evident sufficient.