Bankruptcy Whisperer Trades Courtroom for Boardrooms in Distress

Education technology company Zovio Inc. was bleeding cash and facing a debilitating court loss this year when Jon Henes, a veteran restructuring lawyer, arrived on the scene. This time, though, he wasn’t giving legal advice.

Instead he acted more like a bankruptcy whisperer, staying in the background and helping Zovio’s chief executive officer persuade the board of directors to sell everything, pay off debt and shutter the publicly traded company without filing an expensive Chapter 11 case. If the strategy works, shareholders will probably get nothing, but employees will keep their jobs and services for tens of thousands of ...