When the Arizona-based online used car merchant Carvana was on the brink of running out of cash in early 2023, it hired Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm with the long-standing pre-eminent bankruptcy practice in America.
But rather than filing for Chapter 11 and having a federal judge oversee a restructuring, Carvana artfully reshuffled its balance sheet to raise fresh cash and push out existing bond maturities.
Shareholders, including Carvana’s founding family, avoided having their equity written off to zero, an outcome that would have been a near certainty in bankruptcy court. The retailer has since seen its stock soar from $4 to $350, adding about $75bn in market capitalisation.