Contact: John Hartgen
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COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL WINS SEVENTH ANNUAL CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING COMPETITION

November 9, 2010, Alexandria, Va. — A team from the Columbia Business School won the Bettina M. Whyte Trophy at the Seventh Annual ABI Corporate Restructuring Competition, held Nov. 4-5, 2010, at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia. The second-year MBA student winners also shared a $6,000 cash prize. Students from the Harvard Business School won the second-place award of $3,500, with the University of Virginia Darden School of Business receiving the $2,500 prize for third place.

The competition, which is co-sponsored by ABI and AIRA, provides 12 of the nation’s top MBA programs with a unique opportunity to learn by solving a real-world restructuring case problem. The students had a week to “solve” the problem and prepare comprehensive presentations showing their operational and financial plans before panels of judges representing mock first and second lienholders and bondholders, with a final round before a mock board of directors.

Past winners of the Corporate Restructuring Competition include the Wharton School of Business, Northwestern University Kellogg Graduate School of Management (January 2007 and November 2008), New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business and the Stanford Graduate Business School. Other schools in this year’s competition in addition to the finalists and past years’ winners included the Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business, Duke University Fuqua School of Business, Illinois College of Business, University of California-Berkeley Haas School of Management and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Prizes are funded by the ABI Endowment.

This year’s case was prepared by a team of restructuring experts led by Tom Morrow of AlixPartners (Southfield, Mich.). More than two dozen professionals served as competition judges.

In addition to the case presentations, the competition featured a sponsored networking dinner keynoted by Prof. David A. Skeel, a former ABI Resident Scholar and the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at The University of Pennsylvania School of Law. The dinner was attended by area restructuring professionals and several bankruptcy judges. An awards reception also followed the final round of the competition.

ABI would also like to thank the major sponsors of this year’s competition, including AlixPartners LLP, CRG Partners Group LLC, Lazard, Rothschild and Miller Buckfire & Co. LLC. The sponsors of the reception were Saul Ewing LLP and SSG Capital Advisors, LLC.

To find out more about the Corporate Restructuring Competition and to view event photos, please visit www.abiworld.org/crc10.

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ABI is the largest multi-disciplinary, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research and education on matters related to insolvency. ABI was founded in 1982 to provide Congress and the public with unbiased analysis of bankruptcy issues. The ABI membership includes more than 12,600 attorneys, accountants, bankers, judges, professors, lenders, turnaround specialists and other bankruptcy professionals, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and information. For additional information on ABI, visit www.abiworld.org. For additional conference information, visit http://www.abiworld.org/conferences.html.