Bruce Bennett

Name a major bankruptcy — commercial or municipal — in the United States and chances are Bennett has a piece of it. He’s been involved in the municipal bankruptcies in Detroit and Puerto Rico.

After working on the long-running bankruptcy case of Caesars Entertainment Operating Co., he recently was able to negotiate 66 cents on the dollar for creditors. At the start of the reorganization process, the company offered 9 cents on the dollar.

“The market value is now in the 90 cent range,” he said recently. “It was an incredibly successful case and we’re thrilled about it, our clients are thrilled about it.”

A key to the success of the deal was bringing in a court-appointed examiner to go over the books, Bennett said.

“The sponsors created a new company called Caesars Growth Partners, owned by a company called Caesars Acquisition Corp. it was used to buy multiple valuable properties from the heavily indebted Caesars Entertainment Operating Co. for prices that in our view were way too low and more importantly, ultimately the examiner concluded were way too low,” Bennett said. The judge agreed.

Bennett is also part of the lead counsel to holders of billions of dollars of debt belonging to the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. He said the case was just a larger version of other municipal bankruptcies he’s worked on -- except that Puerto Rico isn’t a state. There was no statutory regime for resolving debts of a U.S. territory, he said.

He now serves as lead counsel to the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority and the Puerto Rico Employee Retirement System.

“They’re both bondholder groups,” Bennett said. “Obviously the issues are different, they’re both secured bonds, but different types of security structure and different kinds of issues. The objective in both is to maximize recovery for bondholders and I would say even though I’ve been working with both groups for two years at this point, in a lot of ways the case is just getting started.”

— Arin Mikailian