Project Amber

Challenge

A MENA hospitality sponsor entered 2020 with a leveraged portfolio and occupancy assumptions set in another era. By 2022, REVPAR had recovered but not to pre-2019 levels, and not uniformly across asset class. DSCR covenants were breached across three lenders — a UAE clearer on the senior term, a second UAE institution on the revolver, and a regional mezzanine lender considering enforcement under the then-applicable 2016 UAE Bankruptcy Law. An agent-bank process was not available — facilities had never been syndicated.

Approach

LMA convened all three lenders into a coordinated track — not a formal standstill, but a disciplined conversation calendar timed to quarterly management reporting. We built one unified 13-week cash forecast, one cross-facility covenant map, and one waterfall every lender could sign off on. The conversation was reframed from 'who gets paid first' to 'how do we all get paid fully, later.' The incoming Federal Decree-Law No. 51 (2024) framework — specifically its Preventive Settlement chapter — was used as a quiet reference point rather than a formal filing.