Experience

Eric E. Johnson is a partner of Holme Roberts & Owen LLP in the firm's Denver office, where he is the head of the firm’s Bankruptcy, Creditors’ Rights and Financial Restructuring Practice Group. He is dedicated to using his expertise to protect creditors’ financial rights and investments, and assisting businesses to successfully manage insolvency risks and issues, whether arising in their own firms or in other firms with which they are doing business.

Following his arrival at the firm in 1989, Mr. Johnson’s practice has focused on bankruptcy and insolvency issues in a wide variety of contexts, including commercial debtor-creditor matters, distressed merger and acquisition transactions, asset sales, structured and asset-based financing transactions, corporate restructuring and workout arrangements, intellectual property sale, financing and licensing transactions, environmental claims, and advising corporate boards on fiduciary duties.  As a result of his broad experience and expertise, Mr. Johnson is also a member of the firm’s Distressed M&A Group, Banking Group, and Loan Workout Team, and an adjunct member of both the firm’s Intellectual Property, Technology and Media Practice Group, and its Private Client Services Group.

Recently, Mr. Johnson successfully concluded a thirteen-year long appointment by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, as lead counsel to the trustee in the liquidation of a regional securities broker-dealer, where he successfully satisfied all claims of the brokerage’s defrauded securities customers through settlement recoveries and litigation victories.  The eleven judgments, primarily in fraudulent transfer cases, and 14 victories in appellate proceedings that Mr. Johnson’s client achieved during that liquidation included a federal court jury verdict awarding the trustee full compensatory and punitive damages on complex fraudulent transfer, breach of fiduciary duty and alter ego claims against the brokerage’s principal.  Mr. Johnson is also a member of the firm's Opinion Committee, has substantial expertise regarding opinion practice in a wide variety of finance and acquisition transactions, and has represented clients in numerous complex structured finance transactions involving bankruptcy remote special purpose entities, including the preparation of substantive non-consolidation opinions meeting the requirements of national lenders and ratings agencies.

Recent Representative Matters:

• Represented professional baseball league in three-year complex workout of debtor-creditor issues involving a minor-league baseball team. Managed competing claims of secured and unsecured creditors, the league, a municipality, former owners and new ownership group, worked with interim management to operate the team, arranged new sponsorship, stadium lease and other agreements and structured series of agreements that allowed the team to be rehabilitated, sold and operated profitably.
   
• Represented buyer of assets of large pharmaceutical manufacturing company in financial distress. Worked with valuation consultants and management to structure agreement and manage potential debtor-creditor, fiduciary duty and indemnity risks.
   
• Represented group administering assets involved in a Japanese bankruptcy proceeding to work out debtor-creditor claims and sell a 25-square mile buffalo ranch in eastern Colorado, including formulation of complex agreement to administer claims of foreign and domestic creditors and governmental agencies.
   
• Represented multiple non-profit organizations in remodeling their organizational documents and methods of operation to better comply with fiduciary duties, satisfy creditors’ claims, attract board members, increase donor confidence and serve their charitable missions more effectively.
   
• Represented venture capital firm in negotiating debtor-in-possession financing agreement with bankrupt telecommunications company, including formulation of plan of reorganization, litigation with other creditors, and ultimate settlement upon conversion leading to payment of lender client.
   
• Represented large real estate investment firm in real estate purchases in multiple large bankruptcy cases, including negotiation of “stalking horse” agreements, formulation and obtaining court approval of break-up fees, drafting of sale motions and litigation to obtain appropriate court sale orders.
   
• Represented computer manufacturers in successfully blocking a planned sale of patent rights in bankruptcy and arranging an auction process resulting in client’s acquisition of those rights in a court-administered auction, and in defending the acquisition of other patent license rights from a bankruptcy estate.
   
• Represented bankruptcy trustee and environmental claimants in cases involving successful cleanup of contaminated property to satisfaction of federal and state authorities, for profitable sale on behalf of bankruptcy estate, and recovery on behalf of claimants, respectively.

Presentations to Professional, Financial and Corporate Groups

• Distressed M&A Transactions:  Finding Opportunities and Avoiding Risks
• How to Win (or Not to Lose) a Bankruptcy Sale
• Creditor Protections in Like-Kind Exchanges Under I.R.C. §1031
• Bankruptcy 101: An Introduction to Bankruptcy for Non-Bankruptcy Lawyers
• What Every Director and Officer Should Know About Bankruptcy and Insolvency
• Corporate Reputation: Managing Your Most Valuable Asset
• Key Bankruptcy Concepts in Letter of Credit Transactions
• Bankruptcy Trends and Issues Affecting Home Mortgage Lending
• Security Interests in Intellectual Property and Licenses of Intellectual Property in Bankruptcy
• An Introduction to Bankruptcy for Valuation Consultants
• The Colorado Foreign Capital Depository Act
• Legal Issues for Derivatives Transactions: When Bankruptcy Happens to Derivatives
• The BAPCPA of 2005 and its Impact on Various Areas of Bankruptcy Practice
• Serving on Creditors’ Committees: You Can Influence the Outcome
• Tearing Down the Walls: Piercing the Corporate Veil and Substantive Consolidation
• Colorado’s Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act

Publications

“Security Interests in Intellectual Property and Licenses of Intellectual Property in Bankruptcy,” CBA-CLE Seminar (2009)

“New Delaware Court Rulings Allow Managers of Insolvent Companies to Pursue Risky Strategies – But They Cannot Benefit Insiders,” HRO Client Alert (2008)

“FASB’s Proposed Amendments to Statement No. 5, Accounting for Contingencies, and Other Developments May Severely Impact Lawyers,”  HRO Client Alert (2008)

“Good News and Bad News for Corporate Managers Dealing with Insolvency Issues,” HRO Client Alert (2007)

“The Colorado Foreign Capital Depository Act,”  Am. Bankr. Inst. Rocky Mtn. Regional Mtg. (2006)

“Radical Changes in Bankruptcy Law,”  HRO Client Alert (2005)

“The BAPCPA of 2005 and Its Impact on Various Areas of Bankruptcy Practice,” Sterling Educational Services Seminar (2005)

“Security Interests in Intellectual Property and Licenses of Intellectual Property in Bankruptcy,” CBA-CLE Business Law Institute (2005)

“Avoiding the Undertow of Deepening Insolvency,” HRO Client Alert (2005)

"New Local Bankruptcy Rules: Trap for the Uninformed," Colorado Lawyer (1993)

"Creditors Lobby to Defeat Poor Plan," Business Credit (1993)

"Treatment of Secured Creditors in Bankruptcy Plans," "Defeating the Debtor's Plan" and "Miscellaneous Creditor Relief," in Protection of Secured Interests in Bankruptcy in Colorado, National Business Institute (1991)

Professional & Community Affiliations

Colorado Bar Association

Denver Bar Association

Washington State Bar Association

American Bar Association

American Bankruptcy Institute

Turnaround Management Association

State of Colorado, 4th Judicial District Judicial Nominating Commission (selected by Governor)

Grinnell College President's Medal, as outstanding member of the class of 1982

Phi Beta Kappa, 1981