Product Description

A collection of case studies illustrates real-world techniques, implementation, and strategies on corporate restructuring
Over the period 1981-1998, public companies with combined assets of over half a trillion dollars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Over the same period, over 400 public companies underwent corporate spin-offs, divesting businesses valued at more than $250 billion. Each of these companies, and all of these dollars, were in some way or another involved in corporate restructuring. Gilson's cases studies have been used extensively in executive programs and are perfect tools to refer to when faced with real-world corporate restructuring issues.
Stuart C. Gilson (Boston, MA) is an Associate Professor at Harvard University and a widely acknowledged expert on corporate restructuring. He has studied and published on the intricacies of both domestic and international corporate restructuring.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #160958 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 528 pages

Review
"With the number of corporate bond defaults up sharply over the lows of the middle-to-late 1990s, Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Bankruptcies, Buyouts, and Breakups (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) is reaching the market at an apt moment. The book, which is written by Harvard Business School Professor Stuart Gilson, employs the case study method to examine the restructuring of the claims of creditors, shareholders, and employees. Of greatest interest to high yield and distressed investors is the section on financial distress, which studies such familiar companies as Continental Airlines, Flagstar Companies, The Loewen Group, and National Convenience Stores. Gilson also provides a market survey of distressed investing, exploring such nuances as prepackaged bankruptcy, "bondmail" (gaining control of a class of debt to block approval of a reorganization plan), exit strategies, tax issues, and disqualification of votes on a bankruptcy reorganization plan. Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring also addresses company overhauls that occur outside the context of potential or actual bankruptcy. Techniques include issuance of tracking stock, spin-offs, layoffs, plant closings, revisions of employee retirement benefits, and mergers. Gilson maintains a global perspective, incorporating cases not only from the United States, but also from Germany and Thailand."-- High Yield, a Merrill publication by Marty Fridson

"... Stuart Gilson, of the Harvard Business School, has managed to write a book important to everybody in the distressed market that is also quite enjoyable. His prose is fluid and succinct and a pleasure to read. . . The text covers 13 corporate restructurings focusing on debt workouts, vulture investing, equity spinoffs, tracking stock, asset divestitures, employee layoffs, corporate downsizing, M & A, HLTs, wage give-backs, employee stock buyouts, and the restructuring of employee benefit plans. . . . this is an especially valuable text for anybody working in the distressed market." (Turnarounds & Workouts Magazine, Review by David M. Henderson)

Gilson's book provides a meaningful framework for analyzing any restructuring and a guide to various tools and additional references....Detailed exhibits at the end of each chapter provide the hard, quantifiable financial and industry data that management and stakeholders must interpret to plan, negotiate, and execute a restructuring. The exhibits are especially insightful and provide examples of alternatives for presenting relevant factual information on complex restructurings. (The Journal of Corporate Renewal)

Review
"Gilson reminds readers that the devil is truly in the details, filling the 516-page text with real and specific financial data, flow charts, and statistics to illuminate each case. A portable version of Gilson's course, Creating Value through Corporate Restructuring gives readers the chance to learn the intricacies of this increasingly critical management process in today's volatile business climate." (The Harvard Business School Bulletin, December 2001)

The information provided in Gilsons book is the next best thing to being there. For those of us who are outside the major industrial and business centers and deal with smaller corporate bankruptcies, the book provides a useful source of information for creative solutions. The level of detail in the book is exceptional. . . . Gilson gives a sense of the maneuvering that occurs behind the scenes in every workout and bankruptcy case. (American Bankruptcy Institute Journal)

Book Info
Answers questions about the ways in which corporate restructuring affects the nature of corporations. Features case studies in employee layoffs and downsizing, value allocation, corporate bankruptcy reorganization, debt workouts, and vulture investing. DLC: Corporate reorganization--Case studies.

Customer Reviews

Finance with Negative Signs
Someone (perhaps it was I) has said that bankruptcy is corporate finance with negative signs. This has always been true but it is amazing how far mainstream finance has gone to try to resist the comparison. The resistance must be, must have been more cultural than economic, because it is axiomatic that anything is a bargain at the right price, and that there is no more or less money to be made in "distress investing" than in any other. Two generations ago, there seems to have been only one person in American that really understood this point - the late Max Heine, who made his grubstake by investing in out-of-favor railroad bonds in the Great Depression, and then riding the wave of prosperity that emerged in World War II. In the same vein, 40 years ago just about any bankruptcy judge would have looked on an "assigned claim" as some kind of monster.

Times have changed. Now everybody's an arbitrageur. The "vulture investors" have their conferences, their social clubs, and for all I know, their own softball team.

Stuart C. Gilson"s "Corporate Restructuring" symbolizes the sea change from the old attitude to the new. It adds the imprimatur of the Harvard Business School to the notion that vulture investing is just another way of making money. As others have noted, this isn't a work of high theory - indeed it has a kind of slapdash, direct-off-the-photocopier feel that is remarkably common in business publications. For fancy theory, you look elsewhere - in law to the likes of Douglas Baird or Lucian Arye Bebchuk; in finance to the developing lore of "real options." But the case studies are an excellent device for getting a sense of the texture and possibilities of vulture investing. It can be read with profit alongside Hilary Rosenberg's "The Vulture Investors." Ambitious students who want the full theoretical framework will match it with David G. Luenberger's "Investment Science." But Gilson's work has merit on its own as one kind of introduction to this revolution in investment thinking.

Only usefull for students
What a waiste of money.... The writer has not included any anlyses or real solutions to the cases that a provided. Unless you are a student in a class that use this book, this book gives you absolute nothing.

Good book but needs a companion text
This is a very good case book, complete with intricate case studies illustrating numerous aspects of challenges often faced in restructuring in bankruptcy. However, the book assumes a level of knowledge about M&A concepts that many readers may not have. Consequently, I would recommend using this book in conjunction with another excellent text by DePamphilis entitled Mergers and Acquisitions: Integrated Approach. There are two editions. The second edition is more complete and up to date. It also tackles some of the problems illustrated in this book.