Book 5 · distressed credit
See the same default from both sides of the trade.
A professional-investigative book about the market that begins where many borrowers stop seeing: NPL sales, claims trading, servicing, restructuring, enforcement, insolvency and special-situations capital. It asks who buys the claim, why, at what economics, who services it, and when a credit position can become a route to collateral, control or underlying asset value.
“Hidden market” or “underworld” describes opacity to ordinary readers, not criminality. The book distinguishes legitimate distressed investing, hard bargaining, disputed conduct and proven illegality.
The invisible transaction
A defaulted obligation can be sold, discounted, serviced, restructured or enforced. Originator, purchaser, servicer, borrower, insolvency estate and collateral holder may then have sharply different incentives.
Two perspectives
The book is designed to make both perspectives legible: why distressed investors pursue certain recoveries, and what those same strategies look like from the company, owner or guarantor on the other side.
Case study, not boundary
The Bankia → SAREB → Project Meridian → Promontoria Holding 122 / Cerberus perimeter → later-creditor history is one route through the subject. The wider book extends beyond one hotel to Spanish, European and international distressed-credit practice where reliable sources support comparison.
For investors, owners, insolvency professionals, lawyers, journalists, finance students and policymakers: discount, servicing, enforcement strategy, collateral, recovery economics, information asymmetry and the point at which a credit investment can alter control of the underlying asset.