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In the past year, cooperative agreements among creditors morphed from pacts with the same creditors agreeing to the same treatment, to a growing number of carveouts for the steerco that presumably does most of the work, to full on tiered co-ops baking in multiple outcomes for similarly situated creditors, much like an LME would anyway.

There’s been some public back-and-forth between major law firms for and against co-ops in general — are they creditors’ best tool in an increasingly issuer friendly world? Are they anti-competitive? And of course, now there are two lawsuits, challenging cooperation agreements between creditors of Selecta and Altice USA as violating antitrust laws.

Attendees at a recent 9fin webinar voted tiered co-ops the 2025 liability management innovation with the most staying power in the year to come. And panelists — which included White & Case Partner Gregory Pesce, Glenn Agre Partner Shai Schmidt, Davis Polk Partner Adam Shpeen, Gibson Dunn Partner Stephen Silverman and Latham & Watkins Partner Joe Zujkowski — agreed.

“I think we’re going to continue to see these things; it’s just a matter of how tiered they are and how much flexibility there is,” Silverman, who helped pioneer these tiered agreements at Gibson Dunn, said during the webinar.