Weil tapped for Lehman Bros Chapter 11 filing

Weil Gotshal’s longstanding grip on the best debtor side restructuring work had seemed to be loosening recently.  Last year, department co-head Martin Bienenstock defected to Dewey & LeBoeuf with partner Judy Liu and an associate. Also in 2007, four for Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft.  But the most serious challenge to Weil’s dominance came from  Kirkland & Ellis which poached a number of Weil partners and managed to snag 6 of the 12 largest restructuring matters for the first half of 2008, including the $2.43 billion restructuring of casino operator Tropicana Entertainment LLC. Weil had none of them. 

Well, this morning, in the wake of “One of the most tumultuous weekends in Wall Street's history,” comes news of the Chapter 11 filing of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. This is the biggest bankruptcy filing in history, with $613 billion listed in debt.  The filing was made by Weil, led by the legendary Harvey Miller.  Any doubt that Weil’s restructuring team continues to be the “Bronx Bombers of the bankruptcy bar” will no doubt dissipate. (As noted on dealbook, the last time a major U.S. investment house failed was back in 1990, when Drexel Burnham Lambert filed Chapter 11. Weil (and Miller) was debtor’s counsel in that matter as well.)

-posted by brian

UPDATE: Nearly every news account refers the Lehman filing as the "biggest ever," but as this round-up of the 10 largest Chapter 11 cases shows, the Lehman filing is bigger than the next nine fillings combined, and then some.