On December 31, 2012, after a contentious four-year Chapter 11 case, Tribune Company and its debtor subsidiaries successfully emerged from Chapter 11 protection. Chadbourne & Parke represented the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the Tribune case, which involved approximately $13 billion in total funded debt and was the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. When Tribune filed for reorganization, it owned eight newspapers (including The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune), 23 television stations and the Chicago Cubs.
Chadbourne was involved in every aspect of the Tribune case. The Firm investigated potential avoidance actions and negotiated, and pursued confirmation of, a reorganization plan supported by the Tribune debtors, the creditors’ committee and certain prepetition lenders. The reorganization plan implemented a settlement of certain claims arising from Tribune’s failed 2007 leveraged buyout, and left other potentially valuable claims to be pursued by a litigation trust to benefit unsecured creditors of Tribune. The settlement resulted in significant recoveries to Tribune’s unsecured creditors, including payment in full to unsecured creditors of Tribune’s subsidiary debtors.
The plan and related settlement were approved despite a multi-year litigation effort by certain creditors dissatisfied with its terms. Chadbourne lawyers played a leading role in the successful litigation of many plan-related matters, which included efforts to stay the plan’s implementation after the initiation of various appeals, several of which remain pending.
The Chadbourne team for the Official Committee was led by Howard Seife, chair of Chadbourne’s Bankruptcy and Restructuring Practice. Mr. Seife previously represented creditors’ committees in the Chapter 11 cases filed by the New York Daily News (Maxwell Newspapers) and the New York Post. The Chadbourne team also included partners David LeMay, Douglas Deutsch, Thomas McCormack and Andrew Rosenblatt; counsel Marc Ashley; and associates Marc Roitman, Eric Daucher and Michael Distefano.
Chadbourne’s bankruptcy practice has handled several high profile official and ad hoc creditor committee representations, including Spiegel Inc./Eddie Bauer, ACA Financial Guaranty and Parmalat USA.
The Tribune Creditors’ Committee was comprised of JP Morgan Chase Bank and Warner Bros. Television (as Committee Co-Chairs), together with Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, Wilmington Trust, Buena Vista Television, William Niese, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., and the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild Local 32035.
