Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

It’s that time of year again for basketball, brackets and bankruptcy.

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP’s Bankruptcy Blog is hosting its second competition in honor of March Madness. But instead of college basketball teams, this bracket features 20 important Chapter 11 cases battling for the designation of the top bankruptcy of all time.

The Weil bracket consists of four divisions: 2008 Crisis, Trendsetters, Litigators and Heavy Industry. Each division currently contains five teams, and starting Wednesday, you can vote for the No. 4 seed in each division. Voting for the Sweet 16 will start the following Wednesday, March 21.

Much like UConn, Kentucky and Duke in past NCAA tournaments, there are some bankruptcies that would be a standard fixture in any contest. You’ve got Lehman Brothers (representing the 2008 Crisis division), Enron and WorldCom (Trendsetters), GM and Chrysler (Heavy Industry) and Marshall, aka the Anna Nicole Smith case (Litigators).

You can check out the full bracket on Weil’s blog here. We’re not the betting type, but we’ll go out on a limb and pick the division champs now: Lehman will sweep the 2008 Crisis division, and Marshall will go for gold in the Litigators division. Trendsetters is a bit harder, though we’ll settle on both Continental bankruptcies for the potential influence its restructuring strategies could have on American Airlines parent AMR’s current Chapter 11 case. And as for Heavy Industry, we’ll choose GM and Chrysler, though perhaps Lyondell will give the automakers a run for their money?

Last year, Weil’s competition concerned the most important U.S. bankruptcy decision ever. Northern Pipeline v. Marathon Pipeline won the championship over Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association v. 203 North LaSalle St. Partnership.