Bio

Mike Weinczok practice encompasses all aspects of business restructuring, distress investing and commercial lending. He acts as counsel for creditors and financial institutions in international and cross-border reorganizations as well as represents capital market participants in undervalue or distress investments. He also regularly acts for indenture and collateral trustees in Canadian and cross-border reorganization and commercial transactions. Mike previously was a managing director and partner of a significant Canadian private equity fund manager focused on distress and undervalue investments across a wide variety of industries including biotech, automotive, manufacturing, communications and transportation. Mike was involved in examining capital structures of targets from both an equity and debt perspective and led a number of key investments and initiatives. During this time he also participated in a variety of merger and acquisition reviews, restructuring opportunities, and shareholder activist rights issues. Mike has routinely acted as counsel to creditors, debtors, monitors, lenders, boards of directors, syndicates, purchasers, sellers, and underwriters on a wide variety of transactions, including many involving the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act and Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. He has extensive experience in asset-based lending, commercial lending, private mergers and acquisitions, commercial arbitration, project finance, refinancings, swaps, derivatives, shareholder issues, and corporate restructurings. Mike also has extensive experience in front of the Commercial Court and other Canadian and US courts. Mike played a significant role in the recent North American automotive industry restructurings. He acted for the Federal Government of Canada, through Industry Canada, in connection with the court-supervised sale of both General Motors and Chrysler. The transactions involved over US$12.5 billion of new Canadian Government financing and included a host of extremely time-sensitive issues, including cross-border bankruptcy, M&A, financing and litigation. The successful resolution allowed both automakers to maintain production share in the North American market and saved thousands of jobs. Mike has researched investments, participated in various valuations (e.g., discounted cash flow modeling, comparable transactions analysis and comparable [competitive] industry analysis), examined the capital structure of the target from both an equity and debt perspective, considered potential operational and turnaround review strategies and performed SWOT analysis, Porter analysis, liquidation analysis and arbitrage trading analysis. He has also considered various merger and acquisitions reviews, restructuring opportunities and shareholder activist rights issues. Mike has been responsible for and led the structuring of an asset-based lending vehicle, significant investment in the BioPharma industry and participated in operational reviews and execution in a variety of investments including the automotive, media, restaurant, manufacturing, BioPharma and other industries.