Over the last few years I’ve been asked incessantly if I’ll ever create a newsletter. This is an idea that I’ve always balked at because even though I love to write and have written hundreds of thousands of words pontificating on various transactions, themes, and trends over the last half-a-decade it’s been at my own leisure – poking and prodding away when I have some free time.
To write a newsletter is a serious and regular time commitment – and while I've been equally surprised and touched by how many have enjoyed my little missives, there's no getting around that I could never make enough from a newsletter to justify its encroachment on my already exceptionally limited free time (unless I charge a significant amount and try to make my writing appeal to a wider audience – both of which I have a serious aversion to).
But despite the obvious reasons not to start a newsletter, I’ve (obviously!) done so for three reasons...
First, this offers me an outlet to write (which I find cathartic) that doesn't seem like a total waste of time and due to the small cost associated with Distressed Dispatch it forces me to commit pen to paper on a more regular basis.
Second, this offers me a nice excuse to think through, in a more deliberate way, things that do (or could) matter in the future (which will be reflected in the kind of topics covered – so, no discussions on the umpteenth retailer that's filed).
Third, this provides me a little platform to partially counterbalance what I believe has been a proliferation of putrid restructuring takes that have festered (because they've been left unchallenged both in-front of and behind paywalls) and have undoubtably influenced recent decisions (see: Serta, Incora – even Purdue).
While Distressed Dispatch isn’t designed to change hearts and minds, it is designed to try to help people understand how to possibly think about the most controversial themes, trends, and transactions that have occurred through a different lens.
But, of course, Distressed Dispatch won’t just be an outlet for me to air my grievances – future dispatches will involve discussions on ongoing distressed situations, breakdowns of recent transactions of note, pontifications on potential future transactions, and highlights of broader (contentious or otherwise) credit themes.
In short, this newsletter discusses the situations that matter to me and covers what I want to write about in the moment (with the level of seriousness or depth I feel like in the moment).
In other words, Distressed Dispatch is an editorial board of one – with each dispatch reflecting my views and opinions (that some may or may not enjoy going through) not dispassionate retrospectives that seek to be the definitive account or comprehensive accounts of all that has happened in HY or distressed credit over the last ten days.
Given this, chances are there'll be scant in-court coverage unless what's happening in-court has significant implications for future out-of-court transactions. Likewise, I won’t talk about notable, but otherwise unactionable, credits because those don't matter to me.
There will no equal-time rule here and I won’t engage in bothsidesism. When it comes to the thornier issues that have come to dominate the discourse, this might (full disclosure) have the feel of a bit of a psyop (if Kirkland & Ellis ever sponsors the newsletter, then you’ll know it’s really a psyop; if I ever change my tune on coops, then you'll know Gibson Dunn has some kompromat on me).
Needless to say, I have zero interest in trying to cajole anyone into signing up, and make no claims as to if Distressed Dispatch will be helpful, informative, or useful. This is all for fun and to scratch my own itch. So, one should think of Distressed Dispatch as a (possibly) well-written and (unequivocally) verbose diary that details what I'm thinking about most at any given time.
You can poke through the archive to see the kinds of things discussed – which will evolve over time – and, of course, there's no obligation to subscribe for more than a month (there's only the option to subscribe on a month-to-month basis because in the future I might find this all to be too much of a time sink). So, for students out there hopefully the cost feels pretty limited since it can be canceled at anytime.
(If the creation of these dispatches ever does become too tedious, all subscriptions will be paused but all current subscribers will have their full allotment of dispatches and will maintain full access to the archives indefinitely.)
Since I love to write and have a certain over-wrought style – akin to if Evelyn Waugh had a brain aneurysm that significantly reduced down his capacities – each dispatch tends to be around 6,000-10,000 words give or take a few thousand words on either side.
Thus, each dispatch will probably take 30-60min to read. While it'd no doubt make more sense to publish smaller pieces at more regular intervals, I never know when I'll have the time to write so a promise to write twice a week or whatever would undoubtably need to be broken at some point.
Anyway, this is perhaps all the anthesis of a sales pitch but if you'd like to subscribe to Distressed Dispatch, feel free to do so (after payment you'll be redirected back here to sign-in with the email address tied to your order).
