Stephen Blank

• Represented an ad hoc group of creditors of a leading provider of visual communications in an out-of-court restructuring that reduced the company’s debt load by $450 million, infused the company with new capital, and restructured ownership.
• Represented a prepetition lender in a bankruptcy case of a U.S. dairy processor, including the partial credit bid of substantially all the debtors’ assets through a Section 363 sale.
• Represented an investment management firm as the last-out lender of a trucking company in Chapter 11 that included a Section 363 purchase of certain trucking company assets.
• Represented a global financial services firm as the agent and term loan lender in the restructuring of one of the country’s largest suppliers of pillows, mattress pads, and other bedding products to the retail industry, with both Chapter 11 proceedings and a filing under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.
• Represented a national bank as the agent and lender under a revolving credit agreement for an offshore drilling contractor.
• Represented a U.S.-based multinational investment bank and financial services holding company as the administrative and collateral agent under a secured credit facility totaling over $1 billion.
• Represented a national bank as the administrative agent, collateral agent, and letter of credit issuer under the $800 million post-petition financing for a U.S.-based nuclear power company.
• Represented the purchaser in the acquisition of certain assets during their bankruptcy cases, which involved Chapter 11 proceedings and a filing under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.
• Represented an oilfield logistics and equipment company and its affiliates as debtors in their prepackaged Chapter 11 cases.
• Represented funds that held over $360 million in secured prepetition debt and DIP lenders in a St. Louis–based coal-mining company’s 2015 Chapter 11 case.

Stephen Blank is a partner in Alston & Bird’s Financial Restructuring & Reorganization Group. He counsels borrowers, lenders, investors, agents, ad hoc lender groups, and creditors on distressed and non-distressed financial situations, including debt restructurings and workouts, financing and securitization transactions, and distressed merger and acquisition transactions. Stephen’s practice also encompasses in- and out-of-court restructurings, forbearance arrangements, debt-for-equity exchanges, intercreditor arrangements, agreements among lenders, Section 363 asset sales, out-of-court distressed investing, and Chapter 15 and cross-border proceedings.

Stephen is recognized in The Best Lawyers in America^© “Ones to Watch” for his work in Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights/Insolvency and Reorganization Law.

Stephen earned his law degree, cum laude, from Brooklyn Law School, where he served as the managing editor of the Journal of Law & Policy. He previously clerked for the Hon. James Peck in the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court.

Bar Admissions

• New York
• New Jersey
• Connecticut

Education

• Brooklyn Law School (J.D., 2007)
• Johns Hopkins University (B.A., 2004)

Memberships