Martin J Bienenstock

Practice Areas

Martin Bienenstock is chair of Proskauer's Business Solutions, Governance, Restructuring & Bankruptcy Group. Martin provides clients with multidisciplinary solutions that draw on his combined experience in restructuring, corporate governance, reorganization, litigation, Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley. Martin’s restructuring practice focuses on restructuring troubled situations including Puerto Rico to benefit all their stakeholders including their people, investors and creditors. Martin’s governance practice is targeted at keeping healthy companies healthy and growing, and saving distressed companies, while protecting directors and officers with cutting edge best practices.

Martin is repeatedly retained to solve momentous problems. Currently, Martin leads the Firm’s representation of the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, charged with restoring fiscal responsibility and market access to the Commonwealth by developing fiscal reforms and restructuring its $74 billion of bond debt and $50 billion of unfunded pension obligations. Martin also leads the Firm’s representations of the Westinghouse creditors’ committee and the Caesars Entertainment creditors’ committee for unsecured claimholders. In the Caesars cases, the creditors Martin represents were offered four cents at the outset and are settling for approximately 65 cents. General Motors retained him to formulate the section 363 strategy that he presented to the U.S. Auto Task Force, which deployed it to save General Motors and Chrysler. He represented Enron in its chapter 11 case that has now paid multiple creditors in full. Recently, Martin developed the Colombian-U.S.-Canadian reorganization plan for Pacific Exploration, supported by its bank creditors and bond creditors. Martin routinely provides legal and strategic advice to directors, businesses, investors and creditors, advising on complex restructurings, acquisitions, trials and appeals. He handled the Owens Corning appeal, reversing substantive consolidation to increase the value of his bank clients' claims against Owens Corning from $600 million to more than $2.2 billion. He charted the takeover of troubled Finova for a joint venture between Berkshire Hathaway and Leucadia National Corp., and achieved the successful reorganizations of companies such as Enron and Republic Engineered Products over multiple objections. Martin developed successful reorganizations for Capmark and AMBAC. He also prepared the initial draft of what became Ireland’s reorganization statute.

Martin also teaches corporate reorganization at Harvard Law School and University of Michigan Law School.