Just as there’s no free lunch, there are no free loans. That’s the essence of the effort that borrowers and lenders have been making for several years now to cope with troubled commercial real estate loans. As attorneys who have been on the front line of distressed debt tell DAI, restructurings—no matter how creative or inventive they may be—always come at a price.
In the words of Gordon Gerson of Gerson Law Firm in San Diego, the best and simplest way to restructure a distressed loan permanently is with new capital, either from the borrower or from another source. Otherwise, the restructuring is almost always a temporary measure like the extend-and-pretend approach that has become an industry clich