Our Expertise
Debt restructuring, discounted loan payoffs and dealing with personal guarantees can be a complicated, costly and time-consuming process for companies that choose to go it alone.
HMS partners with company owners, managers and other professionals to increase the efficiency and reduce the expense of accomplishing debt-related workouts.
Our practice focuses on turnarounds and financial restructuring in real estate-intense and working capital-intense industries, such as commercial property owners, homebuilders, retail stores, restaurant chains and commercial construction businesses. We work hard to find solutions even for investors, companies and guarantors who have been told by other firms that their circumstances are irreparable.
Since 1993, we’ve restructured more than $10 billion in client assets, working with the country’s largest banks, key regional and local lenders, insurance companies, CMBS special servicers and pension funds. Our track record and our reputation with lenders nationwide make a crucial difference for clients who are looking for considerable and fast improvements.
Click here for list of representative lenders.
Our Team
The HMS team includes experienced negotiators, four of whom are founding partners of the firm. Our team members have extensive experience in executive leadership positions in real estate, banking and restaurant industries. Our professionals spend 100 percent of their time on restructuring for our clients and are solely responsible for negotiating with lenders. We take pride in the fact that we do not delegate or outsource our projects.
The HMS Strategy
Our comprehensive services include:
- Reducing or eliminating personal guarantees
- Accurate and insightful real estate portfolio assessment
- Development of plans that protect clients’ core business liabilities and minimize the risk for other stakeholders
- Balance sheet restructuring to restore liquidity, helping the client quickly return to a stable position
- No-nonsense negotiation with creditors, carried out in a cordial and professional manner that maintains clients’ reputation and goodwill with their business associates
We pursue debt restructuring through a variety of channels, such as loan modifications, discounted loan payoff and personal guarantee removal/reduction. When foreclosure is the best option, we negotiate a “friendly foreclosure” that can often save clients a substantial amount of money. In addition to restructuring loans, we work with our clients’ lenders and other sources to secure the operating capital that companies need to stay in business.
Personal Guarantees
For borrowers with personal guarantees, HMS helps minimize, manage and periodically remove the significant liability associated with personally guaranteed loans.
Many guarantors (even those with multi-million-dollar loans) don’t understand that creditors have the ability to quickly pursue many of their personal assets—what they’ve worked for their entirely lives with pre-judgment writs of attachments. Once these writs become seasoned in about 90 days, then the creditor has a secured interest in all of those assets (i.e. bank accounts, securities, personal residences, etc.) Guarantors are frequently caught off-guard by the aggressive speed with which creditors can act; as a result, they sometimes agree to the disadvantageous conditions lenders typically offer. HMS knows how to minimize this possible outcome and has many years of successfully doing so.
With regard to guarantors, HMS can play a much-needed role: that of a professional, knowledgeable third-party. The firm can devise and present to lenders a “Repayment Plan” that is better for the lender and the borrower compared to personal Chapter 11 liquidation plan. In those situations where the lender continues to be aggressive, HMS can guide the debtor through a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy—with the result of preventing one bad loan from decimating a lifetime’s work.
What our clients are saying
Time is critical in this business, where results are the true measure of value. Contact a member of the HMS team today for more information or a free consultation.
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