Reorg Research covers the arcane news of distressed debt

Reorg Research wants to be the go-to source for news about distressed debt and leveraged finance.

Founded by CEO Kent Collier, Reorg charges tens of thousands a year to large hedge funds and investment banks willing to pay that amount to receive court filings and stories analyzing bankruptcy cases and other litigation produced by Reorg’s editorial staff of two dozen journalists, analysts and attorneys.

Their stories often beat those produced by more mainstream business journalism outfits because Reorg finds the important filings and sends them directly to clients, following with stories later. The clients are willing to pay thousands of dollars for the news because they use the information to decide whether to invest.

“There was a big opportunity of cost to follow these situations — bankruptcies and antitrust,” said Collier in a telephone interview on Monday. “When you give a reader or a user that much data, it overwhelms them. So we turned a fire house of information into targeted information so only the very relevant and salient information went to our subscriber base.”

Competitors include Bloomberg, Mergermarket and Debtwire.

Reorg posts approximately 20 stories each day, beginning at 6 a.m., and its stories run the gamut from covering the Caesar’s casinos to litigation involving preferred shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the federal government. Its reporters break news about companies considering bankruptcy court protection and attend hearings. They may also live blog a hearing.

“We obviously like people with the experience of doing this before,” said Collier, a former research analyst focused on high yield, distressed debt, and special situations at a number of buy-side institutions, including Millennium Partners, Catalyst Investment Management, Assurant Asset Management, and Babson Capital. “We win on accuracy and speed and expertise. We don’t just want any run-of-the-mill general reporter or analyst. We want the expertise. That is what our subscriber pays us for.”

Reorg pays close attention to  the major bankruptcy courts in Delaware and New York. It also recently expanded with offices in London and Puerto Rico. On a daily basis, its staff is checking on between 40 and 50 cases, and it’s recently paying more attention to companies in the energy industry given the drop in oil prices.

Future expansion plans include expanding coverage in Europe, adding coverage of esoteric covenants and indentured agreements and expanding more into litigation that moves the equities markets.

Business news and information “is changing very quickly, and we’re trying to put out great technology and a great team of reporters and lawyers that are going to put us ahead of the game,” said Collier.