R. NEAL BATSON, Esq.

R. Neal Batson R. Neal Batson is Special Counsel to Alston & Bird LLP. Mr. Batson was appointed by the United States Department of Justice to serve as the Examiner for Enron Corp. and was authorized to investigate various aspects of the company. He is a former leader of the firm's Bankruptcy Practice Group and former chair of the firm's Partners' Committee. Mr. Batson's practice has concentrated on bankruptcy, commercial litigation, creditors' rights, workouts, business reorganizations and corporate restructuring during the last 35 years. He also serves as an ADR neutral in mediation, arbitration and case evaluation. He has served as lead counsel to debtors, creditors' committees, equity holders, and secured lenders in numerous Chapter 11 cases filed throughout the United States.

Mr. Batson is a past Chair of the American College of Bankruptcy and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He is a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a former director of the Association of Insolvency and Restructuring Advisors, a Director Emeritus and former President of the Southeastern Bankruptcy Law Institute, and at the request of the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court has served on the Advisory Committee on the Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He is a former President of the Atlanta Bar Association, a Life Member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, a former officer and director of the American Bankruptcy Institute, and has served as the Acting Southeastern Bankruptcy Law Institute Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Adjunct Professor in Trial Practice at Emory University School of Law.

Mr. Batson is a graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Vanderbilt Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif. He was a law clerk to Judge Griffin B. Bell, U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit (who subsequently became Attorney General of the United States), before joining Alston & Bird (then known as Alston, Miller & Gaines) in 1967. Mr. Batson has been profiled in The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers, Chambers USA America's Leading Business Lawyers, K&A Restructuring Register of America's Top 100 Restructuring Professionals, Who's Who in American Law, and The Best Lawyers in America. He has lectured and written extensively in the field of insolvency and trial practice.

Representative Experience

• In 2002 was appointed by the United States Department of Justice as Examiner for Enron Corp., and was authorized to investigate various aspects of a company that had filed one of the most visible and complex Chapter 11 cases in American history.
  
  
• Served as the court-approved Examiner in the Southmark Corporation case in Dallas, Texas (a multimillion-dollar conglomerate restructured through a Chapter 11), which, until Enron, was the largest examination in American history.
  
  
• Represented the Chairman and President of a chapter 11 debtor in negotiating aspects of a multibillion dollar reorganization plan which included a substantial return to shareholders.
  
  
• Represented a major electric power cooperative in a restructuring of more than 3 billion dollars in debt with agencies of the U.S. Government and in a subsequent chapter 11 case.
  
  
• Served as lead bankruptcy counsel to the third largest REIT in the United States in confirming a successful restructuring plan.
  
  
• Represented the chapter 11 creditors' committee of a large public company operating more than 300 fast food locations.