Sep. 13, 2012
Peter M. Gilhuly
See more on Peter M. GilhulyLatham & Watkins LLP Los Angeles Practice type: corporate transactions Specialty: bankruptcy, mergers and acquisitions
For Peter M. Gilhuly, the head of Latham & Watkins LLP's West Coast insolvency practice, bankruptcy law means moving quickly - even when traffic slows to a crawl.
In a case that closed in July, he represented the Traffic Control and Safety Corp. and its wholly owned subsidiaries as debtors in connection with the restructuring of $60 million of secured debt and their Chapter 11 proceeding. The corporation conducted the Carmageddon project, which shut down a portion of Interstate 405 in West Los Angeles last year.
"The thing I love is you keep putting your head in different businesses - you get to learn about traffic control, which I didn't think about as a business," he explained. "Carmageddon, this is what a lot of peoples' lives is. It's just fun to do what we do."
Being a bankruptcy lawyer means playing more than one role, he said.
"The client often can't understand the bankruptcy process so you're kind of a mixture of a lawyer and a business person," Gilhuly said. "You get to do things very quickly and without too much order."
In the past few months, Gilhuly has juggled several notable cases and is representing the buyers of Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP's South African and Italian offices. Baker & McKenzie LLP is trying to buy the South African office while Ernst & Young Global Ltd. is trying to buy the Italian office, he said.
Gilhuly also represented GR Match LLC, an affiliate of Guthy-Renker LLC, this year in an agreement to purchase assets from Los Angeles-based CyberDefender Corp. in connection with the latter company's bankruptcy. CyberDefender makes Internet security software.
"The case involved a very interesting legal issue. It was the first time in Delaware that the judges had addressed a key asset of bankruptcy sales," he said. "It was a pretty significant ruling because of the subject matter."
He also represented Kidsco Media Ventures LLC, a company owned by Saban Capital Group Inc., in acquiring all of the assets relating to The CW Television Network in the Chapter 11 case of 4Kids Entertainment Inc. and related companies. Konami Digital Entertainment Inc., a Japanese public company, split the assets up for sale with Kidsco acquiring the CW network assets and Konami acquiring the Yu-Gi-Oh! cartoon and trading card game.
He also is involved in the Eastman Kodak Co. auction.
- AMEERA BUTT
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