Seeking to protect their investments in the face of increased liability management exercises, lenders began signing “cooperation agreements,” which required the lenders to cooperate when negotiating to restructure existing debt or provide new debt to their shared borrower. These cooperation agreements protect lenders from “creditor-on-creditor violence” — when one lender (or a subset of lenders) renegotiates with a borrower to the benefit of the negotiating lender and the detriment of the others.
In November 2025, Optimum Communications, Inc. (f/k/a Altice) and CSC Holdings, LLC (together, Optimum) filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against its lenders — Apollo, Ares, GoldenTree, Loomis, Oaktree, and PGIM (collectively, the Cooperative) — challenging their cooperation agreement as an unlawful cartel. In the complaint, Optimum alleges two antitrust theories: (i) the Cooperation Agreement constituted a group boycott of Optimum because the Cooperative members agreed not to individually work with Optimum to restructure debt absent supermajority approval from the Cooperative, and (ii) the Cooperation Agreement constituted an unlawful price-fixing scheme by requiring the Cooperative’s steering committee to negotiate with Optimum exclusively, rather than allow Optimum to negotiate individual discounts with individual lenders. Optimum alleges that because the Cooperative controls approximately 88% of the entire leveraged finance market and 99% of Optimum’s outstanding debt, the Cooperation Agreement has made it incredibly difficult for Optimum to restructure its debt.
Continue Reading Optimum’s Shot Across the Bow: An Antitrust Challenge to Cooperation Agreements
By Anne Li, Mark Lichtenstein, Ilana Lubin, Preetha Chakrabarti, and Michelle Chipetine.
A Georgia bankruptcy court on April 17 issued a significant ruling that breaks new ground concerning how future claimants’ representatives in asbestos bankruptcies (“FCRs”) are chosen. In In re The Fairbanks Co., Case No. 18-41768-PWB (Bankr. N.D. Ga. April 17, 2019), the bankruptcy court held that (i) any party in interest may nominate an FCR candidate for the court’s consideration, (ii) the court must apply an “independent inquiry” into a proposed FCR’s qualifications, without giving deference to the debtor’s nomination, and (iii) “the proper standard for consideration of a future claims representative is akin to that of a guardian ad litem such that the individual must not only be disinterested and qualified, but also objective, independent, and loyally committed to protecting the interests of future claimants.”