Americas Restructuring Adviser: Evercore
Soft landing
Evercore has built a formidable restructuring shop alongside the biggest independent M&A franchise, able to compete with once dominant players after taking talent from the likes of Lazard and Goldman Sachs. The restructuring group prides itself on teamwork and innovative solutions to complex problems. Evercore is IFR's Americas Restructuring Adviser of the Year.
Evercore’s restructuring group is led by a group of seven partners: Daniel Aronson, Brent Banks, Gregory Berube, Avinash D’Souza, Stephen Goldstein, Roopesh Shah and David Ying.
There are more than 60 people in the group, which has been steadily growing, Aronson said.
Since 2020, restructuring banker headcount is up nearly 45%, ensuring the firm can scale up to meet growing client demand without compromising senior involvement.
The bank says its policy is to staff each engagement with two partners to ensure "24/7 coverage and diversity of experience and perspective across all phases of the deal". Additionally, Evercore says it only pursues mandates in which it can bring strong industry expertise combined with technical restructuring capabilities that can shape meaningful outcomes.
“There are no lanes, no heads in the group,” Aronson said. “We execute together. If we win a mandate, the person best suited to run the transaction takes the lead.”
Aronson called the effort a “gang tackle” with multiple members of the restructuring team working on an assignment along with bankers across Evercore.
If an assignment has a heavy litigation component, Aronson is likely to be very involved. If the assignment requires more on liability management expertise, one of the three partners who joined from Goldman Sachs, including Shah, will likely have a leading role.
Liability management continued to be a key driver of restructuring activity in 2025, particularly among sponsor-backed companies. And Evercore has built a leading market share of liability management transactions, having advised on approximately 50% of the transactions since 2024.
The group’s restructuring business covers capital raising, debt covenant amendments, exchanges, Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and liability management. Capital raising and selling distressed assets has grown considerably in the past four years, from 4% to about 23% of the business.
Liability management, which has come to dominate the restructuring landscape, is beginning to ease, as more market deals fall apart or fail to produce lasting results.
Aronson said 80% of the bank’s work is advising sponsors, up from 50% four years ago.
Those are sought-after assignments, with few firms managing to become the go-to adviser for certain sponsors.
“Sponsors are not afraid of debt,” Aronson said. “They invested in lots of companies putting lots of money to work and it’s getting towards the end of their debt cycle and they need to do something about it,” he said.
So there are a lot of the inbound calls coming from sponsors asking for liability management and restructuring expertise.
In 2025, Evercore’s restructuring team advised on more than 70 transactions. The team worked with US clients on complex liability management situations, representing 16 deals involving a total of more than US$29bn of debt and raised new capital exceeding US$1bn in challenging situations.
Among the biggest was a liability management exercise for Warner Bros Discovery, which split itself in two. Warner launched a tender for its outstanding bonds and the exchange Evercore devised, working with JP Morgan, was one of the first to restrict creditors from forming cooperation groups.
Under the plan, bondholders were prohibited from signing co-op agreements where they pledge not support a new financing unless the entire group signs on.
Warner asked for, and its bondholders accepted, a “non-boycott covenant”. Market participants called the move a game changer in liability management.
Covenant Review called the provision “novel”, and warned it could have negative effects for bondholders. “While the language used is more refined than previous attempts we have seen, as this is a matter of original drafting there will surely be unintended consequences," it said.
Warner was not distressed. But its plan to separate into two could have been blocked by bondholders without an aggressive exchange, Aronson said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind transaction,” he said.
Evercore was also financial adviser to Bausch Health on its US$7.9bn refinancing transaction, which comprised US$4.4bn in senior secured notes, a US$500m senior secured revolving credit facility and a US$3bn senior secured term loan B facility.
It was a significant transition in Bausch’s capital structure, pushing back debt maturities while providing flexibility for strategic initiatives.