INTRODUCTION

Prepacked bankruptcies, or “prepacks,” are considered a hybrid form of distressed restructuring because they share certain characteristics with both of the widely used alternatives for reorganizing distressed companies—out-of-court restructurings (OCRs) and traditional Chapter 11 reorganizations. Prepacks are similar to OCRs in that creditors and the debtor agree to the major terms of the reorganization outside of the court. Prepacks are similar to traditional Chapter 11 filings in that the reorganization occurs under court supervision, confirmation of the plan requires approval by two-thirds in amount and one-half in number by each class of claimholder, and all claimholders must exchange their old securities in accordance with the terms of the plan. In a prepack, the Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition and a plan of reorganization are filed simultaneously with the court.

In a 1991 article in this journal, John McConnell and Henri Servaes laid out a number of hypotheses as to why distressed firms might use prepackaged bankruptcies to reorganize.1 At the time of their article, however, prepacks were still relatively uncommon and these authors were limited to an “anecdotal” discussion of four cases to make their points. With the passage of time and the growth in the number of prepacks, we have been able to assemble data for a substantial sample of prepacks.

Our study of prepacks complements a growing literature on the outcomes of various forms of distressed reorganization. A significant concern in this literature is whether the various reorganization procedures are efficient. Inefficient reorganization procedures can result in excessively high direct costs or sub-optimal financing and investment decisions by firms. The most efficient organization procedure is the one that creates the greatest value for the firm, net of all costs. Although efficiency cannot be observed directly, we provide evidence on a number of indirect measures of efficiency—for instance, the time required to reorganize, the cost of reorganizing, and the recovery rates by creditors.

Where the data are available, we compare prepacks to OCRs and traditional Chapter 11s. We find that on most dimensions considered, prepacks lie between the two alternative means of reorganizing financially distressed firms. For example, prepacks have higher costs of reorganizing (as a fraction of assets) than OCRs, but lower costs than conventional bankruptcies. These findings buttress the idea that prepacks are a hybrid form of reorganization that contain some aspects of both OCRs and traditional Chapter 11s.

中文翻译：

---

预包装作为解决财务困境的机制：证据

介绍

预先打包的破产或“预先打包”被认为是不良重组的混合形式，因为它们与两种广泛使用的重组不良公司的替代方案——庭外重组 (OCR) 和传统的第 11 章重组具有某些特征。Prepack 与 OCR 类似，债权人和债务人在法庭外同意重组的主要条款。Prepacks 类似于传统的第 11 章文件，因为重组是在法院监督下进行的，计划的确认需要每一类索赔人的三分之二数量和二分之一数量的批准，并且所有索赔人必须交换他们的旧证券按照计划的条款。在预包装中，

在该杂志 1991 年的一篇文章中，John McConnell 和 Henri Servaes 就陷入困境的公司为何可能使用预先打包的破产进行重组提出了许多假设。 1 然而，在他们发表文章时，预先打包仍然相对不常见，这些作者是仅限于对四个案例的“轶事”讨论来表达他们的观点。随着时间的推移和预包装数量的增加，我们已经能够收集大量预包装样本的数据。

我们对预包装的研究补充了越来越多关于各种形式的不良重组结果的文献。该文献中的一个重要问题是各种重组程序是否有效。低效的重组程序可能导致直接成本过高或企业做出次优的融资和投资决策。最有效的组织程序是为公司创造最大价值（扣除所有成本）的程序。尽管无法直接观察效率，但我们提供了一些间接衡量效率的证据——例如，重组所需的时间、重组成本以及债权人的回收率。

在数据可用的情况下，我们将预包装与 OCR 和传统的第 11 章进行比较。我们发现，在考虑的大多数维度上，预包装位于重组陷入财务困境的公司的两种替代方法之间。例如，与 OCR 相比，prepacks 的重组成本（占资产的一小部分）更高，但比传统破产的成本更低。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即预包装是一种混合形式的重组，其中包含 OCR 和传统第 11 章的某些方面。