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The logical conclusion of the trend of cooperation agreements between creditors who are organizing earlier and earlier and then forming co-ops to defend against the looming threat — explicit or perceived — of some sort of liability management exercise, is to form them immediately upon issuance in order to gain some extra protections they couldn’t successfully negotiate with the issuers.

9fin reported this week on two more co-ops that were formed by lenders to STG Logistics and Alkegen (formerly Unifrax). The companies’ term loans trade at distressed levels and their credit documents permit creditor–on-creditor violence (as do nearly all credit docs), thus co-ops were perhaps inevitable. This adds to a growing list of active co-ops out there, including those among creditors of Weight Watchers, DISH, Altice France, Hearthside and most notably Bausch Health. Also notable are two large capital structures where creditors did not quite form a co-op on the first attempt: Ardagh and iHeartMedia.