This week we chat with Neil Cummings, G. Thomas Stromberg and Richard Levin, partners at Jenner Block, an international firm with offices in Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C.

Lead Left: Gentlemen, you have written extensively about the legal issues surrounding the unitranche agreement among lenders. Could you give us a quick summary of what it is?

Neil Cummings: Absolutely. In a unitranche financing, lenders enter into a side agreement called an agreement among lenders, or AAL.  An AAL splits a single tranche of debt into first out and last out tranches, with a goal of replicating economic and other terms of another type of financing.  Typically the AAL mimics a first/second lien financing.  But an AAL is a very flexible tool and it can be adapted to mirror other financing structures.