Richard Stern

Richard is a fellow and former member of the board of directors of the American College of Bankruptcy and is regularly recognized by publications such as Chambers USA. Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, Richard chaired the restructuring and bankruptcy practice of a national law firm. He previously represented financial institutions for more than 35 years at Luskin, Stern & Eisler LLP, a bankruptcy boutique firm that he co-founded with partner Michael Luskin in 1989.

Richard frequently lectures on workouts of troubled loans, developments in bankruptcy law, and the treatment of derivatives in bankruptcy. He participates in the Barry Zaretsky Roundtable on current bankruptcy issues at Brooklyn Law School, where he also teaches an annual class on debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing.

• Served as primary architect of a consensual liquidation of a hedge fund and resolution and payment of counterparty claims arising out of variance and volatility swaps
• Represented agents and lender groups in connection with cross-border workouts of the project financing of gas storage facilities shut down by the Mexican government and the construction of concessions at the Santiago Airport in Chile
• Represented the lender in an out-of-court restructuring of billions of dollars of margin debt owed by a hedge fund manager and activist investor
• Represented revolving lenders in nonconsensual term, lender-driven “liability management” restructurings involving “drop down” and “uptiering”
• Represented agents, secured lenders, and revolving credit lenders in the successful restructuring and recapitalization of companies in the travel industry including a retail travel platform provider and a manufacturer of airport ground support equipment
• Represented the lender in a proposed turnover of an electric generation power plant in satisfaction of outstanding secured debt
• Represented agent for a group of lenders in the workout of a credit facility secured by a portfolio of 16 landfill gas power generating facilities throughout the United States that concluded with a consensual out-of-court transaction
• Represented agent for a group of secured lenders in the full repayment of their claims in The Hertz Corporation Chapter 11 proceedings
• Secured repayment of a secured lender in the workout and then Chapter 11 proceeding for Rochester Drug Co-Operative Inc., a pharmaceuticals distributor that liquidated following the settlement of criminal and civil charges brought by the federal government
• Represented agents, secured lenders, and hedge providers in various out-of-court restructurings and Chapter 11 cases in the energy and mining industries, including companies owning gold mines, exploratory assets, wind farms, and oil and natural gas reserves.
• Represented agents, secured lenders, and hedge providers in the workout and Chapter 11 case of Mineral Park Inc., the owner of a copper mine in Arizona, and in the Canadian Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) proceeding in Vancouver of Mercator Ltd., its parent company
• Represented multimedia companies in the bankruptcy cases of their counterparties including The Weinstein Company, Relativity Media, THQ Inc., Rdio Inc., and Core Media
• Represented the agent and secured lenders in the $1.5 billion debt restructuring and consensual transfer to the lenders of four power plants, and in the acquisition of an ethanol plant pursuant to a credit bid under Section 363 of the US Bankruptcy Code
• Represented secured lenders in the restructuring of loans and interest rate swaps with the owner of a parking concession and the transfer of the concession to the lenders
• Represented lenders in restructurings of cloud hosting and digital cinema companies
• Represented a financial institution with claims arising under repurchase agreements with several publicly traded mortgage real estate investment trusts (mREITS)
• Represented a letter-of-credit provider in the restructuring of a facility backing bonds issued by an agency of a financially troubled California municipality
• Represented agent for a group of lenders in the workout of an oil and gas company nationalized by Venezuela, which was then named Latin Lawyer’s 2008 Deal of the Year