Over the last 30 years, the distressed debt market has come a long way and is now a legitimate investment asset class, albeit with periodic dramatic activity. Despite the benign credit cycle in US markets since the last great financial crisis, there are still more than 200 financial institutions...

We have often observed, e.g. Altman, Hotchkiss (2006), that the market for investing in distressed securities, (the so-called “vulture” markets), had captured the interest of increasing numbers of investors and analysts. These investors, sometimes categorized as “alternative asset”...