Deal of the Year: W. Conshy firm's Lancaster cigarette-smuggling bankruptcy rescue

Convenience-store distributor Cooper-Booth Wholesale Co. LP has exited bankruptcy and 200 staff have kept their jobs at the company's Mountville, Lancaster County-based facilities, two years after the government forced it into bankruptcy following a New York State cigarette-smuggling investigation.

Cooper-Booth facilities were used by an organization headed by Ocean City, Md.-based Basel Ramadan, who prosecutors said shipped $55 million worth of low-taxed Virginia cigarettes to markets in high-tax New York City using Cooper-Booth's distribution network and a Delaware warehouse. Ramadan was convicted earlier this week of 198 New York State charges, including enterprise corruption, money laundering and tax offenses.

PNC Bank froze Cooper-Booth's accounts at the government's request, cancelling its line of credit and surety bond access and forcing it to file for protection from its unpaid creditors under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code. Agents eventually seized $1.5 million from the company's accounts, but did not press charges against the middleman. Cooper-Booth said it had no knowledge of illegal activity.

SSG, the West Conshohocken investment bank formerly known as Special Situations Group, owned by dealmaker J. Scott Victor and his partners, helped Cooper-Booth raise $35 million in reorganization financing, enabling the firm to pay off all creditors and exit Chapter 11.

The Turanround Management Association, a trade group for troubled-company investment banks like SSG, has named the Cooper-Booth deal its Transaction of the Year and is honoring SSG at its yearly conference in Arizona next week.