The city’s fiercest holdout creditor, bond insurer Syncora Guarantee Inc.,reflected Wednesday in the Detroit News on the last-minute deal that turns the firm and Detroit from adversaries into partners in a hoped-for recovery.
“It is interesting and ironic that we are both part of Detroit’s future,” Syncora attorney Stephen Hackney told The News Wednesday. “It feels better to be loving rather than fighting.”
According to an article by Robert Snell, Christine Ferretti and Chad Livengood, the fight lasted 14 months. During that time, Syncora fought to liquidate the city’s art collection, tried to block repairs to miles of broken streetlights and leveled a “blistering” personal attack on federal mediators that drew a rebuke from the judge.
Syncora’s strategy, Hackney said, wasn’t to target the Detroit Institute of Arts collection in hopes of loosening the city’s grip on less high-profile and cherished assets, including a parking garage in Grand Circus Park and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.
“I can’t say we’re that Machiavellian,” Hackney said, “or smart.”
Meanwhile, The News reports, federal mediators will try to broker a series of deals Thursday that could piggyback on the breakthrough settlement in hopes of ending the city’s bankruptcy case.
Chief U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, lead mediator in the city’s bankruptcy case, on Wednesday ordered Detroit’s legal team and lawyers representing financial creditors to attend closed-door negotiations today in federal court.
