INTRODUCTION The traditional account of corporate reorganizations assumes a financially distressed business faces three conditions simultaneously: (1) It has substantial value as a going concern; (2) its investors cannot sort out the financial distress through ordinary bargaining and instead require Chapter 11's collective forum; and (3) the business cannot be readily sold in the market as a going concern. Remove any one of these conditions, and the standard account of corporate reorganization law falters. In The End of Bankruptcy, we showed that any one of these conditions is rarely found in a financially distressed business today. It is even less likely that all three of them will exist at the same time. Hence, modern Chapter 11 practice cannot be squared with the traditional account. (1) Regardless of whether the number of businesses entering Chapter 11 rises or falls, (2) something different is going on.
