“David’s distinctive background as a practicing attorney, private equity investor, and investment banker provides him with a unique perspective among economic and financial consultants on bankruptcy, restructuring, capital raising, and M&A that will be immensely valuable to our clients and broaden the scope of services we offer,” said Brattle Interim President & Principal David J. Hutchings. “He will be a tremendous asset to our growing Bankruptcy & Restructuring practice, and finance-focused team more broadly, and we are thrilled to welcome him to Brattle.”

Mr. Lorry has worked with public and private companies across a diverse range of industries in all stages of mergers and acquisitions. He also has experience in general corporate finance and commercial transactions, financial and operational due diligence, and a wide range of commercial disputes. Representative transactions and matters include acquisitions through bankruptcy court-supervised sale processes, claims and debt trading, debt financing and restructuring, loan administration, business sales, recharacterization and other avoidance actions, and directors and officers (D&O) and fiduciary claims.

“I am excited to transition into consulting with the recognized leading bankruptcy and securities experts at Brattle,” said Mr. Lorry. “I look forward to collaborating with my new colleagues in Washington, DC, New York, and beyond; and drawing on my years of experience to provide valuable insights and litigation support to resolve clients’ complex situations.”

Prior to joining Brattle, Mr. Lorry was a Managing Director and Senior Counsel, advising private equity funds and their portfolio companies. He previously held several senior roles as a private equity investor and with middle-market investment banking firms. He began his career practicing corporate, insolvency, and commercial law with Am Law 100 firms.

To learn more about Mr. Lorry, please see his full bio.

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In a recent article for the American Bankruptcy Institute’s ABI Journal, Principals Paul Hinton and David McKnight and Associate Dr. Pietro Grandi detail important implications for estimating aggregate claim liabilities in mass tort cases. They examine the selection issues associated with using observed verdicts as benchmarks, and the risk of failing to adjust for the probability of success in litigation. They also discuss why careful analysis is necessary to ensure that benchmarks are appropriate, and that verdict values are properly adjusted to avoid misvaluing claims.

The full article, “The Verdict Valuation Paradox: Implications for Mass Torts,” is available below.

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“George is a welcome addition to Brattle’s growing Chicago office and our firm more broadly,” said Brattle Interim President & Principal David J. Hutchings. “His wide breadth of expertise in M&A-related litigations, coupled with his strong project management skills and focus on collaboration, will further augment Brattle’s capabilities in this area, and he will be a valuable asset to our clients.”

Mr. Hickey has worked on litigations involving appraisal claims, material adverse change (MAC) and material adverse effect (MAE) claims, securities fraud damages, and breach of contract and fiduciary duty disputes. He has served as a testifying expert in matters in the Delaware Court of Chancery and US District Court for the Northern District of California and has supported other testifying experts and academics in several leading M&A jurisdictions and forums.

“I am thrilled to be joining the top-notch team of experts at The Brattle Group,” said Mr. Hickey. “I look forward to collaborating with my new colleagues and providing services to help clients navigate the complex landscape of M&A and bankruptcy-related disputes.”

Before joining Brattle, Mr. Hickey was a Senior Vice President at a litigation consulting firm. He previously founded and served as President of his own firm, which provided pre-litigation damages assessments and early-stage litigation consulting services. He has held several senior positions at other economic and litigation consulting firms.

To learn more about Mr. Hickey, please see his full bio.

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Cryptocurrency tracing – which requires tracing blockchain activity and the internal transactions of crypto businesses – is essential to support creditor asset recovery efforts and clawbacks in cryptocurrency platform bankruptcies such as the ongoing Celsius saga. Mr. Hinton details how tracing methods can differ depending on whether crypto is held on account-based or unspent transaction output (UXTO)-based blockchains, and examines the potential recovery avenues for investors in Celsius’s Custody and Borrow accounts. Such efforts will likely be a test case for investors considering similar actions in other crypto business bankruptcies, including those of FTX, Voyager Digital, and Genesis.

The full article, “How Celsius Customers May Use Tracing to Recover Deposits,” is available below (subscription required).

The post Cryptocurrency Tracing Goes off the Chain: Principal Paul Hinton Discusses How Tracing Crypto Currency Still Requires Traditional Methods in Recent <i>Law360</i> Article appeared first on Brattle.

The winners of the 2022 Brattle Group Prize in Corporate Finance are:

First Prize, $25,000: Andreas Fuster, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Tarun Ramadorai, and Ansgar Walther
Predictably Unequal? The Effects of Machine Learning on Credit Markets
The Journal of Finance, February 2022

Distinguished Paper, $10,000: Asaf Bernstein
Negative Home Equity and Household Labor Supply
The Journal of Finance, December 2021

Distinguished Paper, $10,000: Isaac Hacamo and Kristoph Kleiner
Forced Entrepreneurs
The Journal of Finance, February 2022

The Brattle Group has funded this annual award for more than 20 years. These prizes are presented at the AFA’s annual meeting, and this year’s awards were announced at the AFA’s Annual Meeting 2023, which took place January 6–8 in New Orleans, LA. All papers published in issues of The Journal of Finance from the first five issues of the given year, and December of the previous year, are eligible. We congratulate the winners on their achievements!

View a complete list of past winners

More about the AFA

The post American Finance Association Announces 2022 Recipients of The Brattle Group Prizes in Corporate Finance appeared first on Brattle.

The lawsuit pertains to the Class V common stock of Dell Technologies (ticker DVMT) issued in 2016 in conjunction with Dell’s acquisition of EMC Corporation, which also owned about 80% of VMware. In exchange for the EMC stock, EMC shareholders received cash and shares of DVMT, which were designed to track the economic performance of VMware. In 2018, Dell bought the DVMT shares for cash and Dell Class C shares. DVMT shareholders filed a class action lawsuit against Dell’s controlling shareholders – including CEO Michael Dell, private equity firm Silver Lake, and others – for breaches of fiduciary duty relating to the transaction, which they alleged undervalued DVMT.

The plaintiffs retained Mr. Sacks as the damages expert for the shareholder class. Mr. Sacks and the Brattle team assessed the value of the cash and stocks exchanged in the transaction. Major analyses in this case included the contractual features of the Class V stock, Dell’s corporate governance, the value of control and minority discounts, event studies, and Dell’s risk of bankruptcy, including through option pricing models.

The $1 billion cash settlement is subject to approval by the Delaware Chancery Court.

The post Brattle Clients Secure Historic Settlement in Shareholder Class Action appeared first on Brattle.

In a recent American Bankruptcy Institute Journal article, Senior Associate Julia Zhu examines how certain components of the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) – representing the combined rate of return on a company’s debt and equity capital – have changed in the pandemic era. The author discusses the resulting discount rate considerations for valuation experts and other bankruptcy professionals in a time of heightened uncertainty and volatility, as these changing factors can significantly impact valuation.

The full article, “Discount Rate Considerations in the Pandemic Era,” is available below.

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In their review, the authors found that – while bankruptcy shortcut measures are predictive of insolvency ­– no single measure is perfect, and the predictive power of the different methods is dependent on each company’s characteristics. Although the simplicity of using a single ratio or metric can be advantageous, analyzing multiple metrics as a best practice will likely lead to more robust predictions.

The full article, “Solvency Shortcuts: The Use and Misuse of Simple Tools for Predicting Financial Distress,” is available below.

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