Brooke H. Blackwell

Brooke Blackwell is a member of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring group, where she represents borrowers, lenders, and creditors at all stages of complex financial restructuring and bankruptcy matters.

Brooke has experience at all stages of a financial transaction – from advising both lender and borrower parties on multimillion-dollar credit agreements and debt restructurings to representing interested parties through the course of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. She counsels both debtors and creditors on negotiating, documenting, and executing financial arrangements, as well as navigating the litigation and administrative components of bankruptcy cases.

Clients rely on Brooke’s deep technical knowledge of bankruptcy and restructuring law paired with her business-focused perspective and practical guidance.

Prior to joining Vedder, Brooke was an Associate with two AmLaw 100 firms. In such roles, she represented both debtors and DIP lenders in several large retail matters, including serving as the key individual managing the landlord negotiations and relevant leases for retail Chapter 11. On the creditor side, she also represented buyers in various roles in an array of 363 sales, as well as large ad hoc lender groups in energy matters. She was a member of the team representing the Financial Oversight & Management Board for Puerto Rico, as representative of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, along with other Title III entities, in their respective proceedings under Title III of PROMESA, successfully restructuring over $100 billion of funded debt and pension liabilities, the largest U.S. governmental bankruptcy to date, as well as a member of the team representing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, in its proceeding under Title III of PROMESA.

Experience

*Includes, in some cases, Brooke’s previous experience

• Represented product developer and marketer on the Amazon platform in its business combinations (and related financings), thereby creating one of the world’s largest developers and sellers of consumer products on e-commerce platforms.
• Represented an Ad Hoc Group of Term Loan and Secured Notes Holders with over $1 billion of aggregate claims in connection with Chapter 11 cases of a large energy company.
• Represented an off-priced luxury retailer and its affiliates in their Chapter 11 cases, in which the debtors successfully liquidated and closed their retail locations, sold their intellectual property assets for 10 times more than the pre-auction “stalking horse” bid, became among the first Chapter 11 debtors to sell a participation interest in a sizeable business interruption insurance claim from the effects of the COVID-19 global pandemic, and entered into a global settlement resolving the estates’ claims against their equity owners, cumulatively resulting in material distributions to general unsecured creditors.
• Represented last-out first-lien prepetition lender, DIP lender and credit bid acquirer in Chapter 11 case of a dental services organization providing management services to 150 dental practices in 16 states.