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Acquisition Improv; Distressed dealmaking has only become more perplexing over the past few months, forcing investors to come up with solutions on the fly.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Ken MacFadyen

There was a time, Versa Capital Management's Paul Halpern says, that the 363 bankruptcy sale process could be likened to Calvinball, the ad-libbed playground game dreamed up on the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes.

"The first rule of Calvinball is that the guy holding the ball makes up all the rules," Halpern, a partner and general counsel at the distressed buyout fund, explains. The second rule, as it turns out, is that no two games can be played under the same set of rules.

While the bankruptcy sale process has become more predictable over the past 20 years, various factors have colluded to upset the relative standardization that had been slowly built into the system. For some in the space, it marks a return to the Calvinball era, as the processes and rules around each bankruptcy sale contrast sharply with other seemingly similar situations. And what may have appeared to be a 'done deal' a day ago, can turn into a...

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