About 18 months ago, in July 2024, a group of the world’s most sophisticated creditors banded together in an unusual display of unity. The likes of Apollo, Ares, Oaktree Capital, BlackRock, and JPMorgan Chase—advised by PJT Partners and Akin Gump, no less—tried to prevent the cable company Altice USA from executing a liability management exercise. Perhaps it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. After all, Altice had grown over a decade by taking advantage of artificially low interest rates—the byproduct of the quantitative easing era—to borrow more than $20 billion in debt. If they ever wanted to take advantage of the flexibility in its indentures (code for an L.M.E.), the exercise would pit one creditor against the others.