Honigman represents Sant Partners, LLC in obtaining bankruptcy court approval of plan to acquire Doctors’ Hospital of Michigan

Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP successfully represented Sant Partners, LLC, a Austin, Texas-based family-owned, private equity firm, in obtaining confirmation of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan from U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Walter Shapero. Subject to certain regulatory filings, the approved plan will transfer ownership of Doctors’ Hospital of Michigan in Pontiac to Sant and other minority investors. Several other groups opposed the plan and proposed their own competing reorganization plans, which the bankruptcy court ultimately declined to approve in favor of Sant’s plan. The hospital first went into bankruptcy in 2008 and then again in July 2015. Sant Partners has provided funds to keep the hospital from closing since July.

“Judge Shapero’s confirmation of the Sant plan came after days of multiple evidentiary hearings on two plans after two other competing plans were withdrawn by their proponents,” said Todd Sable, leader of Honigman’s Commercial Transaction Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Bankruptcy, Reorganization and Creditor Rights Practice Group. “In Chapter 11 cases in the Eastern District of Michigan and many other jurisdictions, having competing plans of reorganization advance through multiple, contested confirmation hearings is somewhat unusual.”

The reorganization plan includes strategies to expand the hospital’s medical services offerings and use the extensive knowledge and experience of Sant Partners’ principals and co-investors in the health care industry, gained through their affiliation with the Infrahealth group of companies to stabilize hospital operations. Sant Partners will also facilitate the expansion of the hospital’s medical education programs through its relationship with the St. Martinus University, Faculty of Medicine, which is located on the island of Curaçao in the Carribean Sea.

Honigman’s representation of Sant Partners was led by Todd Sable and Glenn Walter, with significant involvement from Honigman health care law specialists Kenneth Marcus and Jennifer Benedict.