Womble Bond Dickinson announced today that Mark Eckard has joined the firm’s finance, bankruptcy and restructuring group as a partner in the Wilmington office. Eckard represents debtors, creditors’ committees, secured lenders, directors and officers, landlords and unsecured creditors in the full range of matters that arise around distressed companies.
For more than two decades, Eckard has represented parties on every side of a distressed company. He handles Chapter 11 and Chapter 7 proceedings, bankruptcy litigation and assignments for the benefit of creditors, along with the general commercial litigation that runs alongside that work, in both state courts and federal district courts.
“Demand for restructuring counsel has been climbing, and Mark answers it with more than twenty years in bankruptcy and commercial litigation and deep roots in the Delaware bankruptcy bar,” Chad Caby, co-leader of the firm’s finance, bankruptcy and restructuring practice group, said. “Adding a lawyer of Mark’s standing in Wilmington positions the group to take on more bankruptcy and restructuring work in a jurisdiction where many of the biggest and most complex cases are filed.”
Eckard also maintains a broad business and commercial practice rooted in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where his work reaches real estate and commercial transactions, litigation of corporate, commercial, real estate, employment and financially complex family law disputes, and government relations. Eckard’s broad range of experience lets him move between the boardroom, transactions and contracts, day-to-day operational questions and the disputes that arise over the life of a business. Clients also rely on Eckard as outside general counsel, turning to him for strategic advice that heads off the costly litigation that tends to follow from inadequate planning, and he is regularly called on for complex settlement negotiations.
“My clients operate across state and territorial lines, and they need counsel who can do the same without losing sight of the local rules that decide a case,” Eckard said. “Womble gives me that reach, and a bankruptcy bench I’m glad to build alongside.”
Eckard earned his J.D. from Delaware Law School, formerly Widener University School of Law, and his B.A. from Saint Joseph’s University.
