Source: Daily Deal
 
The creditors' committee of bankrupt Mirant Corp. picked Miller Buckfire Lewis Ying & Co. as its financial adviser after a beauty contest among four firms, according to sources.
 
Miller Buckfire beat out Greenhill & Co. LLC, Huron Consulting Group and Jefferies & Co. for the assignment to advise the creditors' group in the biggest bankruptcy case so far this year.
 
Last Friday, George McElreath, the assistant U.S. trustee on the Mirant case, allowed creditors to form two separate official creditors' committees -- one representing Mirant bondholders and banks and the other representing creditors of Mirant Americas Generation Inc., or Magi, a subsidiary with most of the valuable operating assets in the company.
 
Miller Buckfire will represent the former group.
 
After creditors grouped into committees, the Mirant committee members picked a short list of four firms to interview for the financial advisory role.
All of the other advisers to creditors and to the debtor, Mirant, were already chosen at that meeting on July 25.
 
The Mirant creditors' committee has hired Andrews & Kurth LLP and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett as its legal counsel.
 
The 11-member Mirant committee includes seven banks and four bond investors. Citigroup Inc., one of the banks that refused to go along with the company's proposed restructuring plan before the Chapter 11 filing, is among the banks on the committee.
 
Deutsche Bank AG and Appaloosa Management LP are going to co-chair that committee.
 
The Mirant and Magi committees are expected to be at odds in the case because the creditors they represent fought each other over the assets they are entitled to attach as collateral.
 
Mirant filed for Chapter 11 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Fort Worth on July 14 after it failed to get its bank lenders to go along with a restructuring plan.