Dean Foods General Counsel Kristy Waterman and Chief Financial Officer Gary Rahlfs officially filed documents Tuesday seeking to voluntarily restructure the Dallas-based food and beverage company under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Waterman and Rahlfs have hired New York lawyers from Davis Polk & Wardell and Houston lawyers from Norton Rose Fulbright to serve as its lead legal advisors. Dean Foods has tapped Evercore as its investment banker and Alvarez & Marsal as the financial advisor.
A graduate of St. Mary’s University School of Law, Waterman was a corporate lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright for more than seven years. She joined Dean Foods in 2014 as chief counsel on corporate and securities matters. The board promoted Waterman to general counsel three months ago.
Bankruptcy records filed by Dean Foods list four Norton Rose Fulbright lawyers in Houston – partner William Greendyke, partner Jason Boland, senior associate Bob Bruner and associate Julie Goodrich Harrison as working on the case.
Greendyke, a Baylor Law School graduate, is the former chief bankruptcy judge in the Southern District. He has been involved in several large corporate restructurings, including National Convenience Stores (Stop-N-Go), Appletree Markets and Ninfa’s. Bruner clerked for U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur of Houston.
Documents also list Davis Polk partner Brian Resnick, counsel Steven Szanzer and associate Daniel Meyer – all from New York – as co-counsel on the matter.
Rahlfs has been the CFO at Dean Foods for three months. He was previously the vice chancellor for finance at the University of North Texas System. For two decades prior to that, he worked in finance at PepsiCo and Frito Lay, including being CFO of PepsiCo Food’s Canadian operations.
Dean Foods, which reported $7.7 billion of revenue in 2018, lists $1 billion to $10 billion in assets and the same amount in liabilities, according to court documents.
Court records show that several other law firms are also involved representing various parties and creditors, including White & Case, Mayer Brown and Paul Weiss.
The largest creditors listed are Central States Southeast & Southwest Pension Plan ($722.4 million), The Bank of New York Mellon ($700 million), Dairy Farmers of America ($172.9 million), U.S. Department of Agriculture ($16.8 million) and Dallas-based Saputo Dairy Foods ($8.9 million).
Documents filed in the Dean Foods bankruptcy can be found here: https://dm.epiq11.com/case/SouthernFoods/dockets.