The Vulture Investors: The Winners and Losers of the Great American Bankruptcy Feeding Frenzy

In a tour de force of punchy business writing, Institutional Investor senior editor Rosenberg dissects a little-known but increasingly common high-stakes financial game: preying on companies in distress. Operating in a $400 billion ``debt market,'' financiers like Paul Kazarian and Marty Whitman snap up an ailing firm's bonds and bank loans at a discount, then participate in the ensuing bankruptcy or other reorganization process, which usually results in their holdings substantially increasing in value. Case histories illuminate the investors' methods, introduce the field's key players and give blow-by-blow accounts of major corporate upheavals at Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel, Coleco Toys, New Hampshire's Seabrook atomic power plant, Donald Trump's casinos and Allegheny International. The author relates these intricate, suspenseful narratives in a clear, lively style that always instructs and often amuses. ( Aug. )