From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

As one can imagine, there was no shortage of deals nominated in this category and the problems dealt with ranged from mere covenant breaches to debt restructurings with equity infusions. In the majority of instances, the main culprit was the breach of the loan to value covenant, one of the few covenants to sneak into the loan documents of the recent past. With cash flow and on hand liquidity sufficient to service debt, these were largely non-events but for the price extracted by the banks for the necessary waivers. The breach provided the leverage the banks needed to repair their balance sheets and offset their higher funding costs. For others, it was a matter of survival. Armada and Eastwind never made it out of triage, while CSAV and ZIM were eventually taken off of the resuscitator to survive another day. The common feature and what made each of these restructurings work is expressed in the quote from Karl Marx which begins this article or, perhaps more appropriately, the maritime concept of general average, under which all share equally in the risks of a voyage.

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