Winding Up — All co-oped up with no place to go
- Will Macadam
Winding Up is 9fin's weekly newsletter, incorporating summaries and commentary from our European distressed coverage for the past week. Find out more about what we do for distressed here.
Co-operation agreements are fast emerging as a popular tool for creditors in complex distressed situations hoping to tilt the balance of power in their favour. Last week 9fin reported that more than half of Intrum’s 2025 bondholders had signed a co-operation agreement pitting themselves against the company’s restructuring proposals.
The Intrum 2025 co-op agreement is now the fourth such example on European shores. Completing the quartet is Altice, Ardagh, and iQera. Coincidentally three of the names (Altice, Ardagh, and Intrum) feature cross-currency capital structures and pulled in a large amount of investment from the US.
We’ve already opined on the topic a substantial amount in previous Winding Ups (and it really is just a shameless way to shoe horn in a pun), so we’ll try to keep our remarks brief. But suffice to say there’s good reason to believe that we will continue to see creditors deploy co-op agreements in contentious restructurings and stressed refinancings.