Erica J. Richards

Associate

New York, (212) 336-4320

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Education

Boston University (B.A., 2000)
;
Washington and Lee University School of Law (J.D., 2006)

Practices

Banking + Financial Services

Business Restructuring + Insolvency

Financial Institutions + Financial Services

Bar Admissions

New York

Erica Richards is an associate in the Business Restructuring & Insolvency Group in the New York office of Morrison & Foerster LLP.

In Morrison & Foerster's Bankruptcy group, Ms. Richards has assisted in a broad range of matters, including representation of debtors, creditors and creditors committees, and court-appointed examiners.

Prior to joining Morrison & Foerster, Ms. Richards was an associate with a New York-based financial services law firm, where her practice focused on structured finance transactions including whole-company securitizations, CLO's, and CAT bond offerings.

Ms. Richards received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Washington and Lee University School of Law, where she was the Lead Articles Editor for the Washington and Lee Law Review. She received her B.A. from Boston University.

Residential Capital, LLC

(Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) Counsel to Residential Capital, one of the largest residential real estate finance companies with assets and liabilities each in excess of $15 billion, whose business is comprised primarily of loan servicing and origination, and its subsidiary companies, in their pending chapter 11 cases. Residential Capital was the largest bankruptcy filing of 2012 and the case represents the first time ever that a mortgage servicer was able to successfully continue servicing and originating mortgages in bankruptcy and be sold as a going concern.

In re Pinnacle Airlines Corp., et al.

(Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) Representation of the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the Chapter 11 cases of Pinnacle Airlines Corp., et al. Pinnacle Airlines operates as Delta Connection for Delta Airlines, the Debtors’ largest customer and post-petition lender. At the time of filing of their bankruptcy petitions on April 1, 2012, the Debtors had 8,000 employees, over $1 billion in annual revenue and operated over 800 flights a day.

MF Global Holdings Ltd.

(Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) Counsel to Louis J. Freeh, former Federal Judge and former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as Chapter 11 Trustee for MF Global in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding. With $41 billion in assets at the time of filing, MF Global was the largest bankruptcy filing of 2011 and the eighth-largest in U.S. history. This case involves a wind-down of an extremely complex global operation and the realization of value from various entities in the MF Global Group, many of which are in their own administration or liquidation proceedings domestically and internationally.

In re Los Angeles Dodgers LLC, et al.

(Bankr. D. Del.) Representation of the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of the Los Angeles Dodgers in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A plan of reorganization was confirmed by the Bankruptcy Court on April 13, 2012, pursuant to which the baseball team was sold for a record $2 billion. Unsecured creditors received a 100% cash recovery under the plan, in what is the largest and most successful restructuring of a sports franchise in U.S. history.

RadLAX Gateway Hotel, LLC v. Amalgamated Bank

Represented Amalgamated Bank as secured lender in the RadLax Gateway Hotel, LLC bankruptcy. Successfully defeated, before the Seventh Circuit and United States Supreme Court, the debtors’ attempts to restrict the ability of the secured lender to credit bid in a proposed sale of the hotels pursuant to a reorganization plan.

In re Hawaiian Telcom Communications, Inc., et al.

(Bankr. D. Haw.) Represented the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Hawaiian Telcom, the leading provider of telecommunications services in the State of Hawaii.

In re Mesa Air Group, Inc., et al.

(Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) Represented the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Mesa Air Group, Inc., et al. in their Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.

Icelandic Banks

Represented Glitnir Bank hg. and Landsbanki Islands hf., two of the largest banks in Iceland, in Chapter 15 proceedings.

In re South Edge, LLC

(Bankr. D. Nev.) Representation of JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. as administrative agent for a syndicate of lenders, which provided approximately $585 million in secured financing for a planned multibillion-dollar real estate project in Las Vegas. MoFo filed and successfully defended the involuntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition against South Edge, LLC, the developer of the 2,000-acre master planned community, and then negotiated and implemented a reorganization plan, together with a majority of the homebuilder equityholders, which provided the lending syndicate with a par-plus recovery of $335 million.

In re Innkeepers USA Trust

(Bankr. S.D.N.Y.) Representation of the official committee of unsecured creditors of Innkeepers USA Trust in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This is one of the largest national cases, by debt size, filed in 2010 with $1.29 billion in prepetition secured debt, which culminated with the sale of 64 of Innkeepers' hotels to affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management for $1.02 billion. Unsecured creditors are estimated to recover approximately 80–90% on their allowed claims, with many to be paid in full.