Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Thursday, May 28. In today's briefing, a group of Trinseo creditors sued rival lenders, alleging they used complex financing deals to bypass debt limits, strip collateral from other creditors, and position themselves to take control of the struggling chemical company.

A group of Trinseo creditors has sued rival lenders, alleging a series of financing deals improperly stripped away their collateral to benefit a select group of Wall Street firms.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, lenders led by CastleKnight Management said rival creditors, including Angelo Gordon, Apollo Global Management and Oaktree Capital, orchestrated transactions with Trinseo that violated credit agreements and positioned themselves to seize control of the chemical producer at the plaintiffs’ expense.

CastleKnight, which owns more than $270 million of a term loan at Trinseo’s operating company, and several other lenders claimed that the company’s credit agreement barred it from issuing more than $375 million of incremental debt. Trinseo, facing a liquidity crunch, allegedly circumvented these limits by structuring a complex series of transactions.

Talk about versatility. Beth Ford had worked at six companies spanning five industries, including Pepsi, Mobil and Scholastic, before arriving at Land O’Lakes. As CEO of one of the only cooperatives in the Fortune 500, today she’s answerable not to shareholders or investors but to thousands of decentralized owner-members. Half of the U.S.’s harvested acres flow through the Land O’Lakes network.

What does she see from her vantage? A gathering storm in American agriculture. She believes the country isn’t paying enough attention.

With bankruptcies doubling in the past year, median farm income is trending downward, and roughly 90% of family-owned farms and ranches rely on alternative sources of income to survive. While some operations thrive, less than 5% of farms are profitable. Growers have been hit especially hard.

Dechert hired Jerry Hall as a partner in its bankruptcy practice in New York. Hall joins from McDermott Will & Schulte, according to people familiar with the matter. McDermott couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Hall has worked with bankrupt companies, independent directors and official committees in major chapter 11 cases, according to the Dechert announcement. His past cases include Genesis Healthcare, Paragon Industries and Harvest Sherwood Food Distributors.

Hall is one of 45 lateral partners Dechert hired this year. Earlier this month, the firm recruited three partners to its restructuring practice in Dallas, the firm said. Dechert has represented different parties in bankruptcy cases including Tupperware, LATAM Airlines and At Home Group.

–Becky Yerak

The U.S. auto industry faces sobering new math: Some one million prospective buyers have defected from the new-car market since the start of the decade—and they aren’t expected back soon.

Until recently, auto executives, analysts and economists believed that U.S. new-car sales were on a steady climb back to volumes last seen before the pandemic closed factories and scrambled global supply chains.

That’s no longer the case. General Motors, Ford Motor, Toyota and other automakers have said they are planning for sales of new cars to shrink or stagnate this year after consumers—stung by persistent inflation, rising fuel prices and high interest rates—are balking at prices that have risen to around $50,000 on average.

Share your tips, suggestions and feedback with the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy team: Alexander Gladstone; Jodi Xu Klein; Akiko Matsuda; Alicia McElhaney; Becky Yerak. 

Follow us on Twitter: @gladstonea; @jodixu; @AskAkiko; @AliciaMcElhaney; @beckyyerak.