The Octus Download

The mailbag is officially open. Jason Sanjana & Kevin Eckhardt hand the episode over to listeners for the first-ever Octus Download mailbag, starting with Bankruptcy 101: (02:40) Does filing for bankruptcy mean a company is actually going out of business? (04:44) When billions of dollars of debt disappear, who actually loses that money? (07:15) What does “restructuring” really mean? And (10:41) why can’t a ban...

Every retailer in America named Michael is either printing money or closing stores. Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt start with a tale of two Michaels (04:59). Michael Kors, the brand not the man, has quietly closed 139 stores in three years while sales dropped more than $860 million, caught in the collapsing middle where near luxury goes to die. Then the resurrection. Apollo bought Michaels, the craft chain, for $3.3 billion, watc...

Jason Sanjana & Kevin Eckhardt open on Sleep Number, the smart mattress maker that dialed itself into Chapter 11 (02:07). The stock dropped 70 percent, the equity is underwater, and strategic partner Travis Kelce bought his stake on the open market months before the filing. Kevin floats a theory about who actually buys these beds. The numbers tell a sadder story (04:02), and there is a Canadian buyer nobody saw coming (05:35).

F...

Michael Gatto, partner at Silver Point Capital and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and Fordham's Gabelli School of Business, joins at (02:12) to talk teaching, distressed investing, and how he went from a firm running $120 million to a $50 billion shop as its first non founder partner. He makes the case for hiring the gritty Fordham underdog over the Ivy pedigree, and explains why credit has always been a game for str...

Some weeks the news is weird. This week it is weird, litigious, and somehow involves 420,000 uprooted peach trees.

Jason Sanjana & Kevin Eckhardt open with Ryan Cohen's unsolicited, non binding offer to acquire eBay for $125 a share in a cash and stock deal (04:16), a ...

Some companies die because the math was never going to work. Spirit, AMC, and fire truck pricing all make that case differently.

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with an emergency segment on Spirit Airlines (02:31), which ceased all operations on May 2nd after 34 years, 17,000 jobs, and a wind-down that...

Private credit was supposed to be boring. This episode makes the case that boring just got complicated.

Jason Sanjana & Kevin Eckhardt open with a cruise recap and the $80 million law firm hire that broke the internet before bringing in Mark Fischer,, Head of Financial Research at Octus (08:17). He breaks down why private credit is facing its first genuine stress test. Not COVID, not rate hikes in isolation, but both cycles hit...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with the shot heard round the NCAA Tournament (00:01:32)Braylon Mullins' 35 foot buzzer beater that completed a 19 point UConn comeback to stun No. 1 overall seed Duke 73 to 72 in the Elite Eight. Jason confesses to rewatching the postgame press conference on repeat, Kevin sets aside his Syracuse era UConn hatred to celebrate, and the two trade stories about hating Duke, including Kevin's rejec...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with a quick catch-up (00:01:28) as Jason recounts a family ski trip to Vail that devolved into a flu-ridden disaster, complete with an urgent care visit and altitude-amplified misery. They flag a programming note: this episode was recorded before CEO Kent Collier's episode aired, so the timeline is slightly off from the news cycle.

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with a discussion about JFK Jr.’s bar exam struggles, using it as a jumping-off point for a conversation about pressure, public expectations, and how high-profile figures are judged when they stumble.

At (08:14), Kent Collier, Founder and CEO of Octus, joins the sh...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open in Houston bankruptcy court (00:02:20) with Fat Brands’ Chapter 11 filing, breaking down how an aggressive whole business securitization spiraled into allegations of self-help, insider loans, and lender revolt (00:09:45). The core problem was structural: roughly $1.5M a month in management fees against nearly $8M in real operating costs, a model that only worked if consumer spending never...

Season 2 is back Jason Sanjana & Kevin Eckhardt open with a quick life update, then the warm up turns into a real world bankrupt brand mishap when Jason gets bamboozled over the break by a distant bankruptcy friend, Party City, and suddenly a normal errand becomes a reminder that nothing is safe (00:03:14). The main event kicks off when the guys move from that momen...

In this season finale of The Octus Download, hosts Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt are joined by the Honorable Michael B. Kaplan, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of New Jersey, for a candid look at how bankruptcy actually works from inside the courtroom. After settling the long-running debate over whether Central Jersey exists (00:03:54), Judge Kaplan explains how judges evaluate feasibility in modern Chapter 11 cases (00:0...

Jason Sanjana & Kevin Eckhardt open the episode from the Octus studio (00:00:06) and quickly bring in their guest, Josh Sussberg of Kirkland & Ellis (00:01:04). The conversation begins with Sussberg’s early ambition to become a sports journalist and his time at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School (00:01:55), before an almost accidental pivot into l...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with Sonder’s spectacular implosion, where a Chapter 7 filing and a broken Marriott integration turned hotel stays into evacuation drills. At (02:45), they unpack why guests were kicked out mid stay, how the deal fell apart, and why travel bankruptcies always hit consumers the hardest.

At (12:07), they turn to Meta’s scam economy. Fake celebrity ads, counterfeit products, crypto tra...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with the bankruptcy of MTV’s Ridiculousness, the show that turned cultural decline into a business model. Thrill Intermediate LLC is in Chapter 11 after fourteen years and forty-six seasons, and Bloomberg’s sloppy redaction reveals Rob Dyrdek earning more than thirty-two million dollars a year. The hosts break down how a show built from recycled clips became a symbol of cultural ban...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with the kind of week that makes “crisis” sound quaint. First Brands’ auto parts empire gets gutted by a refinancing gone sideways, two billion dollars missing, and more double-pledged inventory than a payday loan strip mall. With founder Patrick James shown the door and CRO Charles Morris dragged off the bench (01:58), the pair dissect how nine billion in creditor claims is c...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open with the collapse of First Brands (02:26), the autoparts empire that ran on borrowed cash until the music stopped. Once a $6 billion capital structure with 20 acquisitions since 2018, the company unraveled after a failed refinancing, a missing quality-of-earnings report, and an expensive dependence on factoring. Skylar Chen, Senio...

Jason Sanjana and Kevin Eckhardt open in Dallas with the collapse of Tricolor Auto Group (02:58). Once a major subprime auto lender and used car chain catering to Hispanic communities across the Southwest, Tricolor filed Chapter 7 overnight, shuttering 65 dealerships. Allegations of double-pledged collateral, warehouse loan defaults, and immigration policy headwinds turned a growth story into a sudden liquidation, raising questions...