Feeding on the Fine Print: What The Art of Vulture Investing Taught Me About Survival

There are very few finance books that you can read without needing a double espresso or a minor existential crisis halfway through. But George Schultze’s The Art of Vulture Investing is one of them. It’s a book that doesn’t just make a case for distressed investing—it makes it sound like a morally justified scavenger hunt.

And it is, in many ways. Not because it turns bankruptcy into a game, but because it treats it for what it is: an inevitable, systemic part of capitalism. A cleanup mechanism. A reset button. A ritual humiliation parade, yes—but also a necessary one. And those who know how to play the game don’t just survive. They profit.

To the uninitiated, vulture investing sounds... well, carnivorous. Circling over dead companies, picking at the carcasses of busted business plans and bad cap tables. But Schultze, a lawyer turned investor with a background in distressed debt and bankruptcy reorganisation, reframes this with surgical precision. He argues that what vultures actually do is prevent the ecosystem from becoming toxic. They remove the rot. They ensure resources are redistributed, rather than evaporated. They restore economic dignity, in their own slightly morbid way.

The core thesis is simple: understanding bankruptcy and accounting isn’t a side quest. It’s the whole game.

Schultze doesn’t waste time with sentiment. He walks through case studies where companies collapse under the weight of their own incompetence, or hubris, or both. And then shows you exactly how an investor with a sharp eye for liquidation preferences, credit hierarchy, and bond covenants can walk away not just solvent—but wealthy.

One story that sticks: the case of Delphi, the auto parts giant. Years of overleveraged operations and poor union negotiations led it into Chapter 11. Everyone panicked. Schultze didn’t. He read the filings. Understood which debt was likely to convert. Positioned accordingly. Made a killing. Not because he was clairvoyant, but because he looked. And as he puts it with almost grim satisfaction: "Most people just don’t do the work."

And that’s the real lesson. Distressed investing isn’t about timing. It’s about analysis. While others run for the hills at the sight of a bankruptcy petition, the vulture investor leans in, flips to the creditor list, and starts underlining things.

What makes the book so compelling is how unapologetically technical it is. There are chapters devoted to how to value defaulted bonds, how to handle debtor-in-possession financing, and how to use court procedure as both shield and sword. It’s not sexy. But it’s real. And in an industry addicted to storytelling and synthetic optimism, that’s oddly refreshing.

There’s also a philosophical point running through the book that I think applies far beyond finance: collapse is part of the cycle. In biotech, in startups, in venture—failure is not aberration. It is standard operating procedure. The trick is not to avoid it. It’s to plan for it. And to structure your position in such a way that when the music stops, you’re sitting in the right chair.

That’s why I recommend this book not just to finance types, but to founders. Especially the ones sleepwalking toward a Series B with no term sheet and a burn rate that would make WeWork blush. Because too many founders think valuation is the endgame. It’s not. Control is. Optionality is. And in down markets, those who understand the rules of restructuring win by default.

And then there’s the personality of Schultze himself. In interviews—like the excellent one available on YouTube—he comes across as coolly methodical, slightly amused by the chaos of others, and deeply uninterested in trend-chasing. He doesn’t pitch himself as a visionary. He pitches himself as someone who reads the documents.

It’s a surprisingly good model.

In a way, the vulture investor is the anti-visionary. Where the typical founder sees potential, they see cash flow projections with four years of fantasy and an unworkable cap table. Where others are selling the dream, they are marking the salvageable parts. And while everyone else is on stage announcing their latest Series A, the vultures are backstage... renegotiating the debt terms.

This isn’t cynicism. It’s resilience. It’s antifragility with a Bloomberg terminal.

So, if you haven’t read The Art of Vulture Investing, do yourself a favour. Buy a copy. Mark it up. And next time someone says, "We’ve got 6 months of runway but a term sheet incoming," smile politely—and check the liquidation stack.

Because in business, as in biology, the scavengers often live longer than the lions. And they usually get paid first.