We take no pleasure in Windstream's resulting financial predicament. Windstream could easily have averted it – first by not playing fast and loose with its noteholders in 2015, hoping nobody would hold the company to account, and second by settling. Instead, Windstream wasted an exorbitant amount – more than would have been needed to settle with us at the time – on an ineffective exchange offer and then on litigation.
In our view, a management and a board with an extreme and unwarranted assessment of Windstream's legal case chose to bet the company. The company lost.