Editor’s Note: The Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable is excited to bring readers the first entry in a new semi-annual series, the BRT Book Corner, which features new and exciting books in the Bankruptcy and Restructuring fields.
Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal
By Professor Melissa B. Jacoby (University of North Carolina School of Law)
How should people evaluate the bankruptcy system? My academic scholarship has reflected a variety of lenses, from federalism and separation of powers, to economic efficiency. I also have observed the hybrid nature of big business bankruptcy – not entirely public or private, and the need for the system to balance a variety of objectives. My new, and first, book, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal, uses the theme of inequality to gather stories about debtors and creditors in cases of many shapes and sizes, featuring disparate impact and outcomes that cannot be readily explained by widely accepted policy principles.
What kind of inequality is at issue? Unjust Debts engages with race inequality, and specifically how Black people fare as debtors (and sometimes as creditors) relative to white people, bolstered by a lot of academic research (as well as investigative journalism). The potentially distinctive experiences of women as debtors, creditors, and professionals (and academics) are also present. Perhaps less conventionally, the book considers the role of social class – of parties but also of bankruptcy professionals, including lawyers. Because the book spans bankruptcies of different types, the stories foreground the disparate treatment of big corporations and humans (otherwise known as fake and real people).
Ultimately, Unjust Debts may provoke more questions than offer answers. Broader conversations about the bankruptcy system, among a wider range of people, are long overdue.
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The Financial Restructuring Tool Set: How to Fix Your Broken Balance Sheet
By Mike Harmon (Managing Partner at Gaviota Advisors LLC, Lecturer in Management at Stanford University Graduate School of Business)
Excessive corporate debt can lead to financial distress, which prevents a business from realizing its full potential. When this occurs, a company transforms into a “zombie,” incapable of making essential investments for its future growth or attracting the resources required to execute its business strategy effectively.
In this book, the restructuring veteran Mike Harmon provides an indispensable go-to guide tailored for executives, business owners, boards of directors, creditors, advisors, and investors grappling with financial distress. He equips stakeholders with an invaluable tool kit for mending a company’s fractured balance sheet while demystifying complex techniques and explaining restructuring methods in an accessible fashion.
Readers will acquire the skills needed to detect early warning signs of distress and to formulate a financial restructuring plan that reduces the risk of future trouble. They will learn how an effective plan optimizes the objectives of a company’s various stakeholders, its ability to service future financial obligations, its legal and contractual constraints, and its future prospects and business strategy.
Written for both current and aspiring practitioners, The Financial Restructuring Tool Set is not just a survival guide―it is a blueprint for transformation, empowering stakeholders to achieve a brighter, more prosperous future.
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