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From Publishers WeeklyIn a tour de strength of punchy business writing, Institutional Investor senior editor Rosenberg dissects a little-known but growingly mutual high-stakes financial game: preying on companies in distress. Operating in a $400 billion “debt market,” financiers like Paul Kazarian and Marty Whitman snap up an ailing firm’s bonds and bank loans at a discount, then participate in the ensuing bankruptcy or other reorganization process, which commonly results in their holdings substantially increasing in value. Case histories illumine the investors’ methods, introduce the field’s key players and give blow-by-blow accounts of major corporate upheavals at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, Coleco Toys, New Hampshire’s Seabrook atomic power plant, Donald Trump’s casinos and Allegheny International. The author relates these intricate, suspenseful narrations in a clear, lively style that always instructs and many times amuses.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Library JournalAt last, a book on bankruptcy that explains basic conceptions before beginning the broader discussion of deals and dealmakers. The author anticipated all the questions this reviewer had and answered them where they were raised. Rosenberg has written in regards to an arcane area of finance, and the book reads like a good suspense novel. The “winners” of the subtitle are the investors themselves, the “losers” the stock holders (and normally management) of the primary company and, more many times than not, the American taxpayer. Recommended for academic and public libraries keeping James B. Stewart’s Den of Thieves ( LJ 10/1/91) and for readers of Stewart’s book, as a glimpse into the aftermath of poor management conclusions or of gorging at the financial trough.
- Alex Hartmann, Bloomsburg Univ. Lib., Pa.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.From Kirkus ReviewsA blue-chip rundown on the predatory Wall Streeters who obtain sizable risks in hope of realizing handsome rewards–by taking big positions at a discount in the distressed debt securities of Chapter 11 casualties. A senior editor at Institutional Investor, Rosenberg chronicles the latter-day emergence of a new breed of opportunist as the takeover wars of the 80′s have given way to the restructuring battles of the 90′s. By her informed and instructive account, a good deal of of the high-profile endeavors that borrowed significant amounts (e.g., in the junk-bond market and from banks) in support of leveraged buyouts or other dubious deals soon found themselves unable to meet their debt-service obligations. Many wound up in federal bankruptcy court, where they became reasonable game for the cash men (no women of note as yet) whom the author characterizes as “vulture investors.” Lineal descendants of the gentlemanly souls who in a patient manner searched for value among the fiscal wreckage of Depression-era railroads, vulture investors are, on the anecdotal proof of Rosenberg’s text, a hard-nosed, unsentimental lot. Backed to a surprising extent by public pension cash (a mainstay of the prior decade’s merger mania), the loan-arrangers don’t hesitate to throw their weight around and antagonize creditor committees or, if need be, judges. Rosenberg offers an accessible, many times agreeably diverting guide to the role played by these scavengers in more than a dozen reorganizations, including those involving Southland (of 7-Eleven fame), Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casinos, and Allegheny International (Oster-Sunbeam). She likewise profiles major players, few of whom (save Carl Icahn) are household names. An evenhanded introduction to as unlovable and consequential a crew as ever pounded a boardroom’s group discussion table. — Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Excellent
