Internal Stakeholders in Restructuring

Internal Stakeholders in Restructuring

Debt Lenders vs. Equity Holders Disconnect

Broadly, the two main internal stakeholder groups in restructuring are:

1. Creditors: Bank Lenders, Institutional Lenders, Direct Lenders
2. Equity Shareholders: Institutional Investors, Retail Investors, Management Team and Employees (i.e. stock-based compensation/pension fund considerations)

As an example, a lender will prioritize being repaid their interest and principal amount – and thereby desire the company to be more risk-averse.

Hence, the usage of covenants as a method of protecting their interests by preventing reckless decision-making that could put their chances of being paid back in full into question.

On the other hand, equity holders theoretically have unlimited upside, which oftentimes can lead to shareholders urging for more aggressive, growth plans and new initiatives to scale the company.

In the case that the company does indeed outperform expectations, the yield earned by lenders is capped, and at most, they could earn interest on time and the principal amount back (and thus causing the disconnect between lenders and equity holders).

Internal Stakeholder Dynamics: Alignment of Incentives in Restructuring

To accomplish a successful restructuring and implementation of a turnaround strategy, all stakeholders must be on the same page for the most part or at the very least be open to negotiation and working together to figure out a solution.

For negotiations to continue moving forward, the trade-off between ones’ self-interests and an objective understanding that certain sacrifices must be made for the greater good is necessary.

On that note, understanding the key internal stakeholders in a restructuring cannot be overstated for RX investment bankers, distressed debt investors, and other stakeholders in a potential restructuring to come to an agreement satisfactory to all parties.

While this certainly does not equate to complete agreement on every single point of discussion with no areas of conflict, the willingness to make compromises must be present for the stakeholders to come to terms for the best interests of the company, as well as for themselves.

Internal Stakeholder Theory: Management Fiduciary Duty

For a non-distressed, financially healthy company, the fiduciary duty of the management team and its Board of Directors is to the equity shareholders (i.e. maximize the firm value for its shareholders).

However, in a restructuring scenario, there is a shift in the management’s fiduciary responsibility once a company appears insolvent (or as it nears that point).

More specifically, the management team’s fiduciary duties must transition from equity holders to creditors once the company enters the so-called “zone of insolvency” once a company becomes distressed.

The management and board now have an obligation to act in the best interests of all stakeholders across the capital structure, as opposed to prioritizing the equity shareholders.

Financial Restructuring: Identifying the Key Stakeholders

One of the main objectives of restructuring is to “right-size” the balance sheet when deemed necessary.

This would imply that either the financial obligations of a company exceeds the enterprise value or the free cash flows to the firm are unable to satisfy its debt payments.

The ability to facilitate successful negotiations stems from understanding what each specific stakeholder desires, as each has differing motivations.

In these types of scenarios, the RX bankers must identify the key stakeholders because the relationship amongst one another is a critical factor that determines how negotiations in crafting a feasible plan for the distressed company will turn out

For RX bankers, it is an absolute necessity that the plan of reorganization (POR) or the solution presented to the key stakeholders is viewed as an equitable solution by most (if not all) classes in order to get their buy-in.

Upon understanding and analyzing the key stakeholders and their incentives, it is also important for bankers to determine which options are available to the debtor at the same time. Neglecting the views of each stakeholder could lead to the common hold-up issue (e.g. a creditor may disapprove of certain fundraising avenues).

Besides raising additional capital, another example would be if the debtor desires to complete a distressed asset sale, which risk-averse stakeholders may disapprove of and attempt to block.

Analyzing Key Stakeholder Dynamics in a Restructuring

In order to make an informed prediction of how a restructuring plan could play out, restructuring investment bankers and distressed debt investors must have an understanding of the stakeholders involved in the process and the options available to each of them.

For a normal, non-distressed company, the most important stakeholder group is the equity holders, but this shifts to the creditors in restructuring.

While equity is typically one distinct class, there may be multiple layers of debt with differing priorities.

For example, a company may have secured bank debt that has a first lien on all of the assets of the firm as well as unsecured notes or bonds outstanding.

Both of these will rank ahead of the equity in terms of the capital structure priority or a liquidation.

The company management acts in the interests of the shareholders and creditors are satisfied as long as interest and debt repayments are timely (i.e. since their upside is fixed, assuming there are no additional features attached).

Otherwise known as the fulcrum debt, the fulcrum security in the context of restructuring represents the cumulative part of the capital structure that lines up with the economic value of the firm.

When a company is in financial distress and restructuring is likely, the most relevant stakeholder becomes the creditors – namely, the fulcrum debt.

Bank Lenders

For most capital structures, banks are the most senior debt and sit at the top of the priority chart.

Simply put, the business model of banks is to be conservative with their lending – meaning that banks prioritize the preservation of capital and focus on profiting through large volumes of loans and capturing relatively lower interest spreads.

When a company becomes distressed, banks that do not sell down their exposure will look to get their recoveries in the form of cash or have the debt rolled over (i.e. the reformulated or restructured company will still have debt owed to the banks).

In most cases, if the company simply has a leverage or liquidity issue and the operating business value is worth more than the bank debt outstanding – which is often given their priority in the capital structure and conservative lending values.

As a result, the banks are indifferent to any restructuring solutions so long as their capital is not at risk, but there are various actions the bank can take:

• This could entail a sale of the company in its entirety to pay off the bank debt or a reduction in debt subordinate to the banks which makes it easier to service the bank debt.
• To the extent a full payout or exiting their loan facility to the company is not possible in a restructuring solution, banks will look to roll over their debt as alluded to above.
• In very dire situations, the banks may get rid of the loan at a loss – usually selling to opportunistic hedge funds or credit funds.

Bondholders and Bondholder Committees

Bondholders are usually the middle tranche in the capital structure, as bonds are typically junior to the bank debt but senior to subordinated debt and equity.

Bonds are often the fulcrum security or otherwise key stakeholders in a restructuring, short of the company being extremely impaired (where the bank will become the fulcrum security).

Other than the shares (equity) which have little or no value, bonds are the more liquid trading security relative to bank debt for opportunistic investors to enter. There are a limited number of investors in bank debt whereas bonds are widely traded.

Bond investors can be further bifurcated into par holders and discount holders / event-driven investors who may have different objectives.

Bondholder Liability Management and Amendments

When the debtor company has a near-term liquidity issue where they cannot refinance (for example, debt capital markets and equity capital markets are closed and the company cannot issue new bonds or shares to take out the maturing bonds) but think that the firm can recover later, there are a number of solutions.

This may also sometimes be the course of action if bondholders have no better options and simply want to kick the can down the road and address the issue later.

In this case, some of the most frequently seen restructuring solutions include:

Of course, in exchange for these concessions, bondholders will require to be compensated with deal sweeteners or amendments that improve their returns.

These bondholder compensations can come in many forms but some of the most common examples include:

Bondholders generally want any amendments to be Net Present Value or NPV neutral or positive to justify making concessions.

This means that they are better off when discounting all future cash flows of the amended bonds (including the sweeteners) versus the existing bond maturing as scheduled.

When the company is severely distressed and noteholders have minimal negotiating leverage, they may have to take an NPV haircut impairing the debt.

Financial Sponsors: Equity Contributions

For a financial sponsor (or any stakeholder) to supply the much-needed cash injection to the distressed company, the rewards must outweigh the risks.

When a company’s financials become stressed to the point where there is limited (or no) equity value, the public shareholders or private equity sponsor may have a limited role to play in a restructuring absent a willingness to inject new capital or money into the corporation.

However, for a public company with a fragmented shareholder base, valuation fights can occur with many shareholders not acquiescing to a new, dilutive equity raise.

For example, a distressed company can have $200mm in debt maturing and be unable to refinance because existing shareholders disapprove of raising $200mm equity as they had originally purchased shares in the company at a much higher valuation.

Otherwise, existing shareholders’ equity ownership that has close to zero value at this point would become further diluted, as well as their voting power.

For private equity-backed companies, a capital injection may be more straightforward in saving a company, if it is regarded as worthwhile.

In order to become an effective stakeholder group in a restructuring, a shareholder or a group of shareholders has to accumulate a large enough position to be a controlling stake or at least be influential in steering conversations with creditors and other stakeholders in a restructuring.