To Protect Their Interests

To Protect Their Interests argues that the history of US bankruptcy law is the history of the most powerful insiders of the day adapting US bankruptcy law to further their aims and objectives: from Jay Gould and the railway barons to the banks involved in W. T. Grant to today’s private equity sponsors. Through his lively historical narrative, Lubben provides insights into the inherent malleability of corporate bankruptcy law and the implications of that adaptive capacity for the present-day reform agenda. – Sarah Paterson, author of Corporate Reorganization Law and Forces of ChangeThis important book on large-scale corporate reorganization in America marries the sophistication of Harvard Business School-style case studies of key early railroad receiverships with deeply researched and often captivating historical narrative. J. P. Morgan and the Wall Street banks who perfected the practice weren’t heroes, Lubben contends, nor are the insiders who dominate Chapter 11 today. They use corporate restructuring to gild their own nests at the expense of those who are not powerful enough to withstand them. – David A. Skeel Jr., author of Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America

Stephen J. Lubben holds the Harvey Washington Wiley Chair in Corporate Governance and Business Ethics at Seton Hall University School of Law. He is the author of The Law of Failure: A Tour Through the Wilds of American Business Insolvency Law (2018). Lubben previously practiced bankruptcy law with a major global firm and wrote a column for the New York Times.