Page 613 - WhyAsInY

“resolvinG tHe Crisis; restorinG tHe ConfiDenCe”
Hold the foregoing thoughts while we take a detour from our travels.
During my first week on the job, I was told that whenever a disposi- tion of real estate or real estate–related assets that involved more than $100 million was proposed to be made by the national office in Wash- ington, my review was required. (At that time, large matters that were not initiated in D.C. were handled by the regional offices, but this was to change.) Approval of large D.C.-generated matters had to be obtained from the RTC’s Executive Committee, and to obtain that approval, the proponent of the disposition was required to draft and submit a “case,” explaining the material facts and the reasoning behind the proposal. Such cases would be first submitted to me for comment, and I would then confer with the executive whose case it was. If I thought that some revisions would be helpful or some implicit legal problem existed, the case would normally be revised in the manner that I suggested, and then both the executive and I would appear in front of the Executive Com- mittee to answer questions and state our opinions.
After I was in my position for a few months, national headquarters formed a committee that would be in charge of attempting to settle liti- gations or “work out” loans where the assets involved not only were of high value but were also located in more than one RTC region. Similar committees whose jurisdiction was confined to a given region were also formed. All of the committees were called, cleverly or not, Settlement Workout Asset Teams (“SWATs”), or as you would suppose, “SWAT teams,” a term that suffered from the same redundancy defect as do “ATM machine” and “the hamotzi.”
And I was made the legal representative on the national SWAT team. As such, I had voting responsibility at the national level on all SWAT matters. In addition, I was charged with both trying to make consistent the methods to be used when applied by the regional SWAT teams and, in a change, signing off on cases that regional SWAT teams presented if more than $100 million in assets were involved (as remained the case with Washington-originated cases).
Travel, SWAT, and Wilburn became inextricably linked. At some • 595 •