The looseness of bond documentation and the flexibility it gives to sponsors and for certain creditors to win out at the expense of others in the debt stack — and often in the same class — is a well worn trope for capital markets journalists. 

To grab greater reader attention for up-tiering and drop down transactions they coined the sensationalist term ‘creditor-on-creditor violence’ to inflame market participants’ sense of unfairness, with aggrieved creditors keen to the play the victim of an allegedly heinous crime.

But we are not talking here about unsophisticated investors who have been duped by hidden documentary loopholes and crafty wording, most of this is occurring in plain sight.