A U.S. bankruptcy judge in Nevada recently confirmed Alpha Guardian’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, with Nicholas Rubin, co-founder of Force 10 Partners, serving as chief restructuring officer. 

“It’s ironic that during a pandemic when so many businesses are liquidating, a good company with good bones but with exorbitant and unjustifiable debt along with bad process can still be saved,” Rubin said. 

After a 2017 merger, Alpha Guardian had in excess of $120 million in debt and turned to Force 10 Partners and Gregory Garman of Garman Turner Gordon to achieve financial security. 

Force 10 successfully negotiated a consensual plan of reorganization between the debtors, the secured creditors represented by Schwartz Law and the official committee of unsecured creditors represented by Catherine Castaldi of the law firm Brown Rudnick in which more than $100 million of senior secured debt and more than $30 million of junior claims were exchanged for interests in a trust, while the balance of the senior secured debt was converted into equity of the reorganized debtor.

Force 10 implemented efforts to stem operating losses, including reducing payroll, improving operational efficiencies, creating oversight of accounting processes and collecting past due receivables. As a result, the debtors drew only $1.1 million of their $4 million debtor-in-possession financing facility.

Alpha Guardian was established in July 2017 through the acquisition and amalgamation of Cannon Safe and Stack-On Products.