Matt Katz, Managing Partner and Head of Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods, was recently featured in a WWD article looking at the complexities of retail bankruptcy amid the pandemic. Matt notes that while bankruptcy usually provides a lot of options for struggling retailers, the pandemic prohibits many of them. He states, “The typical benefits from a Chapter 11 are difficult to take advantage of during this period of shutdown. Inventory valuations are next to impossible to determine, that’s not even taking into account the current inability to access the inventory required to stage it for a liquidation event.”

He also looks to how the process will look in the future stating, “Once the environment eases to support ‘routine’ preparation activities for a bankruptcy, the world will be anything but routine. Court time, judge availability, adviser capacity suggest the larger companies will file first. Therefore, smaller-sized business who are on the edge of insolvency will need to find ways to amend and extend to avoid Chapter 7 [liquidation].”

Read the full article here.

Matt Katz serves as a Managing Partner and heads the Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods and Private Equity practices at SSA & Company