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Companies that "specialize in such things" rarely offer 50 cents on the dollar. Payments that high tend to be for "sure things" like slow Accounts Receivables.

Companies that "specialize in such things" rarely offer 50 cents on the dollar. Payments that high tend to be for "sure things" like slow Accounts Receivables. Anecdote: one small company that I worked for (in the 90s) was having cash flow problems with their larger customers stretching "net 30" into partial payments 4-6 months late. The firms offering to buy AR stuff like this were offering 25-33% up front, or 50% after 60 days. I don't know if the vultures smelled blood, or if there was an industry-wide problem that they saw (and we didn't).

bell-cot 4y ago
Commercial A/R is a different world. The seller ain't selling the debt because he's confident of a quick & sure collection. A load of things about the transactions which produced the debt might be disputed (the thingies they sold us failed to pass QC...). Every line on every invoice can probably be argued by a debtor trying to weasel out of paying. Such grief can really run up the overhead on collecting. Vs. Oberlin has 30x the needed assets, the courts have already ruled that the $36M is owed, and the debt-collection economies of scale kicked in quite a few $M ago. (No, I'm not saying that this particular debt would sell at 97 cents on the dollar. But far less than that would let Lorna get on with her life. And the threat of such a sale might suddenly un-jam the payment check printer at Oberlin.)