Gavin/Solmonese

09/23/2026

A sale is not what happens when a restructuring fails. A sale is one of the things a restructuring can be.

Any company in distress needs three things to be saved: It needs a viable core business, it needs adequate organizational resources and skills, and it needs the financial capability to fund the turnaround.

If you have all three, you can turn the company around. If you are missing any one of them, you cannot, and your choices narrow to two: sell or liquidate.

In this article, Ted Gavin looks at when selling is the restructuring, what a management buyout actually is and when it works, and why selling a distressed business is a different exercise from selling a healthy one.

A successful turnaround raises the value of the business, sometimes by more than the cost of doing it. Selling into distress locks in the low number.

Read the full piece:

Distressed mergers and acquisitions is not a failed restructuring. When a sale is the plan, what a management buyout buys, and what distress costs.

09/22/2026

In 1790, Alexander Hamilton took thirteen financially distressed states, consolidated their debt onto a single federal balance sheet, and gave the new nation the credit standing to function as one entity. Suddenly, the country could act as a single, strong, unified financial entity. It could get credit. State economies improved because the weight had been lifted off them and moved somewhere it could be managed.

In our latest insight, Ted Gavin traces American banking back to its start in Philadelphia and looks at how much of what those first banks were built to do still runs underneath the system today. He also covers why consumer banking has slid so far down the priority list that regulators have to force banks to open retail branches, and what happened after Glass-Steagall came down: After being in place for sixty-six years, it took only eight years for the banking system to implode after the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Read the full piece:

The history of banking in America began in Philadelphia. Ted Gavin on Hamilton's debt plan, Glass-Steagall, and how little the banks have changed since.

08/26/2026

"If I could get every new board member to understand one thing on day one, it would be this: if you do not understand something, you have an obligation, to yourself and to the organization, to ask."

Ted Gavin's new Insight covers what a board is for, what a good one looks like, how governance fails when distress arrives, and where nonprofit boards go wrong in ways their members rarely expect.

Read more:

Board governance is the duty, structure, and independence behind real oversight. Ted Gavin on what a board is for and how it fails in distress.

07/15/2026

The dollar's rise to global reserve currency was neither immediate nor inevitable.

In American Banker, Senior Director Anne Eberhardt draws on her work to trace the dollar's 250-year journey. The story is a reminder that America's strength does not rest solely on its wealth, military power or natural resources. It evolved from a general willingness to adapt to changing circumstances, while preserving the foundations that provide confidence, both domestically and abroad.

With U.S. public debt now north of $31 trillion and debt-to-GDP at 120%, that lesson has rarely felt more relevant.

Read Anne's piece: https://www.americanbanker.com/opinion/the-history-of-the-us-dollar-is-the-history-of-our-countrys-growth

In the year of the country's 250th anniversary celebrations, it's worth looking back at the long road the U.S. dollar took to global dominance, and the lessons we can learn from it.

07/08/2026

Some causes are worth showing up for, and this is one of them.

This summer, Nevin Sayre - Pro Windsurfing Champion, four-time Collegiate Sailing All-American, and inaugural Windsurfing Hall of Fame inductee - is once again taking on the Round the Vineyard Challenge: 55 miles around Martha's Vineyard on a wing foil.

The goal: raise $55,000 for Martha's Vineyard Community Services: $1,000 for every mile.

Over the past two years, Nevin's challenge has already raised more than $100,000 for islanders in need.

100% of every pledge goes directly to programs: childcare, disability and veterans services, mental health, domestic violence support, substance use disorder treatment, and more. These services reach one in four Vineyarders.

Donate here: https://my.onecause.com/fundraiser/organizations/06590253-210f-4cdd-a5cc-0a1d6ef02241/fundraisers/fundraiser:e56180f9-db46-4fd9-85e7-bc11a5fd0d56

07/03/2026

Six years after its enactment, Subchapter V is no longer an experiment. It has become the workhorse of lower-middle-market corporate restructuring: nearly a third of all Chapter 11 cases during the expanded eligibility period were filed under it.

But its success is creating strain. Congress let the $7.5M debt limit sunset in 2024, stranding businesses with $3.4M-$7.5M in liabilities. The ABI estimates nearly 1,500 viable companies were locked out and forced to liquidate. Meanwhile, courts remain split on eligibility, trustee authority, and plan confirmation, producing very different outcomes depending on where a case is filed.

In Ted's latest for Law 360, he argues the Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment Act is a start, but the deeper fix requires Congress and the courts to resolve the doctrinal fragmentation before it overtakes the innovation. Subchapter V can be fixed. It should be fixed.

Read the full piece: https://www.law360.com/articles/2491382

Congress must pass a bill to permanently restore the Subchapter V debt limit and clarify several other key points of the law to prevent a practical restructuring tool from becoming a costly procedural morass, says Ted Gavin at Gavin Solmonese.

06/29/2026

A financial expert in a litigation matter can shape the case long before anyone takes the stand, and in most matters, before there is any certainty the expert will testify at all.

What separates the opinion that survives from the one that does not is rarely the number. It is whether the process was built to be examined.

Read Ted Gavin’s latest: https://gavinsolmonese.com/insights/financial-expert-witness-services/

What a financial expert witness actually does, from pressure-testing a damages model to surviving a Daubert challenge, drawn from real case work.

06/08/2026

Valuation in litigation isn’t just a calculation or a position. It’s one that has to hold up under cross-examination by someone who has spent months looking for the places it does not.

Choosing the wrong standard (or applying it inconsistently) is one of the most common and damaging errors in litigation valuation work. And that's before opposing counsel gets to your discount rate.

Read Ted Gavin take on what actually makes a valuation defensible and where most of them fall apart: https://gavinsolmonese.com/insights/when-the-valuation-becomes-the-case/

The standard of value decides what a business is worth in a dispute. How experts choose one, defend it, and survive cross-examination.

06/01/2026

756 rural hospitals are at risk of closure. More than 40% face immediate financial distress. In 2024 alone, 25 hospitals closed.

Ted Gavin breaks down the financial structure driving this crisis and what Chapter 11 can, and cannot, fix when a hospital's balance sheet breaks:

- Why private insurance reimbursement rates matter more than Medicaid rates
- What Steward Health Care's collapse revealed about sale-leaseback risk
- Why healthcare restructuring is categorically different from any other industry
- What the One Big Beautiful Bill's Medicaid cuts mean for the hospitals already barely surviving

Chapter 11 is a tool. In the right circumstances, it can shed unsustainable debt, renegotiate leases, and create a real path forward. What it cannot do is make an unviable business viable.

Knowing the difference is the work that actually matters.

https://gavinsolmonese.com/insights/rural-hospital-bankruptcy/

Rural hospital bankruptcy is rising as 756 facilities face closure risk. What Chapter 11 can fix in a failing hospital, and what it cannot.

05/21/2026

Chapter 11 is a powerful tool. It can shed debt, renegotiate leases, reject unprofitable contracts, and buy time for a business to reset. What it can't do is fix a business model that doesn't work.

What made the Spirit situation so unusual wasn't the bankruptcy itself. It was the combination of factors that made the bankruptcy inevitable, and the degree to which at least some of those factors were self-inflicted.

Read our full take here:

Spirit Airlines filed Chapter 11 twice and stopped flying in May 2026. An examination of what the model got right, what it got wrong, and why Chapter 11 couldn't fix it.