Creditors’ Committees & Secured Lender Advisory
Vessel Advisors serves as independent financial advisor to official and unofficial creditors' committees in Chapter 11 cases, and as monitoring accountant to secured lenders overseeing distressed borrowers. Independent review of debtor MORs, feasibility challenge, avoidance-action investigation, and borrower-monitoring outside a proceeding.
We provide committees and secured lenders independent analysis of the debtor's financial reporting.
In a Chapter 11 case, the official creditors' committee has a statutory role — independent of the debtor, independent of the U.S. Trustee — charged with representing the unsecured class. The committee's ability to negotiate a fair plan, or to challenge the debtor when the numbers don't hold up, depends on having its own financial advisor who is not depending on the debtor's version of the story.
Outside a proceeding, secured lenders overseeing distressed borrowers face a parallel problem. Weekly borrower reporting can be optimistic, incomplete, or both. An independent monitoring accountant — retained by the lender, working from the borrower's books, reporting on covenant compliance and cash reality — gives the lender something they cannot get from the borrower's own management.
We serve both audiences. The technical work is similar; the retention structure and reporting audience differ.
Committee Engagements
We serve as financial advisor to the unsecured creditors' committee.
MOR Review
Independent review of the debtor's monthly operating reports. Reasonableness testing of reported receipts and disbursements. Identification of unauthorized transactions, insider payments, and reporting anomalies the U.S. Trustee's review may not catch.
Plan Feasibility Challenge
Rigorous testing of the debtor's plan projections and feasibility support. Sensitivity analysis. Comparison to the best-interests-of-creditors test and the absolute-priority baseline. The financial analysis committee counsel brings into confirmation.
Independent Liquidation Analysis
Committee-side liquidation analysis that the debtor's version does not get to define. Recovery estimates by asset class, by claim class, and against alternative case paths.
Preference & Fraudulent Transfer Investigation
Where the debtor is not diligently pursuing avoidance actions, the committee often is. We produce the transfer analyses and recovery estimates that support committee counsel's derivative standing motion or settlement negotiation.
Negotiation Support
Financial analysis behind the committee's negotiating positions on cash collateral, DIP terms, plan structure, and settlement. What the debtor is proposing, what the numbers support, and where the leverage points are.
Court Testimony & Reporting
Where the committee's positions require it, our work supports declarations, expert reports, and testimony at confirmation or in adversary proceedings.
Lender Engagements
We serve as monitoring accountant to the secured lender.
Weekly Borrower Reporting Review
Independent verification of the borrower's weekly cash reports, borrowing base certificates, and covenant compliance schedules. Anomalies flagged and reported to the lender before they become problems.
Independent 13-Week Validation
Where the borrower is submitting a 13-week forecast that the lender is skeptical of, we build the parallel view. Line-level reasonableness, variance history, and the drivers the borrower's forecast may be understating.
Field Audit & Management Letter
Periodic on-site review of the borrower's books, cash controls, AR aging, and inventory. Written management letter to the lender documenting findings, recommendations, and covenant-adjacent concerns.
Covenant Compliance Verification
Independent calculation and verification of financial covenants using the borrower's books. Reconciliation to the borrower's own compliance certificate. Documentation the lender can rely on if the relationship escalates.
Early-Warning Reporting
Written monthly or quarterly reports to the lender's workout or credit officer. What has changed in the borrower's financial condition. What to watch for. When the lender should escalate.
Pre-Workout Diagnostic
Where a borrower is approaching default, we produce the diagnostic that gives the lender an informed view before the workout conversation begins — recovery-value estimate, feasibility read, options analysis. Adjacent to our covenant-breach piece.
For Committees & Lenders
We’re the independent set of eyes on the debtor’s numbers.
MOR review, plan feasibility challenge, liquidation analysis, and transfer investigation for committees; reporting verification and field exams for lenders. We take no debtor-side work in the same case.
Schedule a Discovery Call
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