Author: Edward I. Altman, NYU Stern School of Business
This study finds that about 15% of all debtors, who emerge as continuing entities from reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, or are acquired as part of the bankruptcy process, ultimately file for bankruptcy protection again. This recidivism rate spikes to 18.25% when considering only those firms which emerge as a continuing, independent entity. This highlights what appears to be a significant recidivism problem of our Chapter 11 system.
This article argues that the so-called “Chapter 22” issue should not be dismissed by the bankruptcy community as acceptable just because no interested party objected to the plan of reorganization during the confirmation hearing. Indeed, by applying the Z-Score model to large samples of Chapter 11 and Chapters 22, 33, and 44 firms, highly different and significant expected survival profiles are shown at the time of emergence. The bond-rating-equivalent of the multi-filing sample was CCC versus a BB-profile for the single-filing Chapter 11 sample. I believe that credible distress prediction techniques can be important indicators of the future success of firms emerging from bankruptcy and could even be used by the bankruptcy court in assessing the feasibility of the plan of reorganization – a responsibility that is embedded in the Bankruptcy Code.
The full article is available here.
Leave a Reply