Ropes & Gray has lured an experienced restructuring lawyer from global firm DLA Piper to its offices in New York.
Gregg Galardi joins Ropes & Gray as a partner in the firm’s business restructuring practice. Galardi advises financial institutions, hedge funds, private equity funds, and corporations in pre-packaged and traditional restructurings. He has worked on high-profile matters involving entitities such as CIT Group, City Sports, Circuit City, Polaroid, Delia’s, and Reddy Ice. Galardi pointed to Ropes & Gray’s representation of noteholders and other creditor constituencies as a factor influencing his move.
In a discussion with IFLR1000, Galardi analyzed the restructuring market and identified opportunities in a few sectors.
“For the last few years, the pace of restructurings has been pretty slow, although at the end of last year we saw a pickup in various industries, retail, oil and gas, mining, metals, steel, and various others,” Galardi commented.
“The world is changing from traditional Chapter 11 to prepacks and asset sales. That change was already underway because restructurings are expensive, but what you see picking up now is a lot of prepacks and asset sales in the industries and sectors that I mentioned. It’s fair to say that traditional bank lending is less significant in restructuring today, except in the retail area,” he added.
Galardi holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a Ph.D., M.A., and B.A. form the University of Pennsylvania.