Creditor Protection in Private Equity-Backed Leveraged Buyout and Recapitalisation Practices

Book excerpt: Private equity-backed leveraged buyout (LBO) and leveraged recapitalisation practices have been on the rise since the early 1970s when the LBO model was first invented. They continue to play a major role for investors for their less transparent and less bureaucratic investment models outside of capital markets, where financial regulations become tighter following the financial crisis of 2008 affecting global capital markets in a chain reaction. Private equity-backed LBOs and leveraged recapitalisations continue to be popular investment models, however they carry risks both at the target company level and on a macroeconomic level due to the interconnectedness of these investments with global capital markets for funding and refinancing of acquisition finance debts. Creditor protection mechanisms of company and insolvency law therefore play a central role in preventing or dealing with failures that may be triggered at the target company level and have detrimental effects for all creditors and the economy. Though the European legal capital system must be critically revisited, England's and Germany's already mature markets and legal systems should help in developing a better interpretation of these rules in developing economies like Turkey, consequently establishing a solid base for this investment practice in these economies.