--- title: "Knoa Pharma: who owns and runs Purdue's successor?" language: en canonical: https://dossiertwist.com/dossiers/purdue-pharma/knoa-pharma/ as_of: 2026-10-22 keywords: ["Purdue Pharma L.P.","Purdue Pharma Inc.","OxyContin","Sackler family","Richard Sackler","Pharmaceutical Research Associates L.P.","Beacon Company","Rosebay Medical Company L.P.","The Purdue Frederick Company","Rhodes Pharmaceuticals","Chapter 11","Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P.","third-party releases","Knoa Pharma","McKinsey & Company","opioid litigation","guilty plea","Master Disbursement Trust","shareholder settlement","Mundipharma"] --- # Knoa Pharma: who owns and runs Purdue's successor? - Also known as: Knoa Pharma, LLC · KNOA · NewCo **Question.** What is Knoa Pharma LLC, who owns and governs it, and what does the bankruptcy plan require of it? **Answer.** Knoa Pharma LLC is the operating company that took over Purdue Pharma L.P.'s business on 1 May 2026; under the confirmed plan it receives substantially all the debtors' non-cash assets, without Purdue's liabilities beyond those it assumes. It is wholly owned by the nonprofit Knoa Foundation, run by independent managers chosen by the settling states, led since 1 May 2026 by Marc Kesselman as interim chief executive, and must pay its distributable cash each year to the trusts and the foundation named in the plan. It is not one of the settlement's payment parties. ## From Purdue to Knoa Pharma - Analysis: The idea of a successor company predates the current plan. The 2021 plan, as the District Court and the debtors summarised it, would have passed Purdue's operating assets to a public benefit company 'to be named KNOA', governed by disinterested and independent managers. That plan never took effect: on 27 June 2024 the Supreme Court held that its nonconsensual releases of claims against the family were not authorised, and the parties negotiated a new plan on remand. The 2025 plan revived the structure. Its Disclosure Statement provided that Purdue Pharma L.P. would be dissolved on or immediately after the effective date and its businesses transferred to Knoa Pharma LLC, wholly owned by an independent foundation intended to qualify as a 501(c)(4) organization, and that no federal, state or local government would own the company or the foundation. [src-003] [src-047] [src-040] [src-039] [src-020] [src-015] - Documented: On 27 June 2024 the Supreme Court of the United States, in Harrington, United States Trustee, Region 2 v. Purdue Pharma L.P., No. 23-124, reversed the Second Circuit's judgment (69 F.4th 45) and remanded. By five votes to four (Justice Gorsuch for the Court, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Barrett and Jackson) it held that the bankruptcy code does not authorize a release and injunction that, as part of a Chapter 11 plan of reorganization, effectively seeks to discharge claims against a nondebtor without the consent of affected claimants. The Court called its decision narrow: it did not call into question consensual third-party releases, did not decide what qualifies as a consensual release or pass on a plan providing for full satisfaction of claims against a nondebtor, and, because the plan had been stayed, did not address whether its reading would justify unwinding plans already effective and substantially consummated. Justice Kavanaugh, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, dissented. The petitioner was U.S. Trustee William K. Harrington; the respondents were Purdue Pharma L.P. and others. [src-040] [src-039] [src-020] - Outcome: On remand the parties negotiated a new plan; on 18 November 2025 the Bankruptcy Court confirmed the Eighteenth Amended plan, finding its third-party releases consensual and therefore compliant with Harrington, and the plan became effective on 1 May 2026. - Analysis: Under the confirmed plan Knoa receives substantially all the debtors' non-cash assets and $135 million of unrestricted cash. The assets vest in it free and clear of claims and liabilities, including successor-liability claims based on Purdue's acts before the effective date; Knoa takes on only the Assumed Liabilities, among them the remaining costs of the standard termination of the Purdue Pension Plan, together with the duties to pay out its distributable cash and to make good any shortfall in the debtors' Wind-Up Reserve with the consent of its managers and the Master Disbursement Trust's trustees. The debtors' lead restructuring counsel stated in May 2026 that substantially all operating assets were transferred to Knoa as of the effective date and that the Sackler family has no involvement in Knoa's management and no financial interest in it; these are counsel's statements about its own engagement. [src-101] [src-039] [src-066] - Attributed: In a May 14, 2026 summary of its engagement, the Debtors' lead restructuring counsel stated that the plan delivers approximately $7.4 billion in cash to creditors, with up to an additional $500 million contingent on proceeds from the sale of the Sacklers' international pharmaceutical businesses; that the Sackler family, the company's former owners, is contributing up to $6.5 to $7 billion of the total, including a $1.5 billion payment made on the Effective Date; that individual victims will receive up to $865 million, of which approximately $815 million was funded to the personal injury trust on the Effective Date; and that substantially all operating assets were transferred to Knoa Pharma LLC, wholly owned by Knoa Foundation, an independent 501(c)(4). Counsel added that the Sackler family has no involvement in the management of Knoa Pharma and no financial interest in it, just as it has had no involvement in Purdue since the end of 2018. [src-066] - Qualification: Statement by counsel to the Debtors about its own engagement; the payments made on the Effective Date are not shown by a court record among the retained documents. ## Owner, governance, leadership and obligations · Owner and governance - Analysis: Knoa Pharma is 100% owned by the Knoa Foundation, a newly established not-for-profit 501(c)(4), and is overseen by two boards whose members, the company says, have no prior association with Purdue. The plan sets the structure: a board of five disinterested and independent managers, selected by the settling states with the consent of the Ad Hoc Committee and in consultation with the debtors and the creditors' committee, decides operations and investments under the Foundation's oversight; the Foundation's own board has three disinterested and independent trustees, of whom at most one may be a creditor trustee of the Master Disbursement Trust. The Knoa operating agreement bars non-voting securities, and the Confirmation Order's operating injunction and governance covenants bind the company and any buyer of its opioid business. The New York Attorney General described Knoa as a public benefit corporation entirely owned by the Foundation and overseen by directors and trustees with no association with Purdue. [src-057] [src-101] [src-039] [src-020] [src-005] - Documented: In a release dated May 1, 2026, Knoa Pharma LLC of Stamford, Connecticut announced that it began operations that day, following the conclusion of Purdue Pharma L.P.'s Chapter 11 proceedings on May 1, 2026, when Purdue permanently ceased operations. The company stated that it is 100% owned by the newly established not-for-profit Knoa Foundation, a 501(c)(4), and is overseen by two independent boards whose members have no prior association with Purdue: the Knoa Foundation Board of Trustees (Paul B. Rothman, chair, Rahul Gupta and David Saltzman) and the Knoa Pharma Board of Directors (Norbert Riedel, chair, Karen Griffin, Patricia Lang and Mike McHale). [src-057] - Qualification: Company statement; the Chapter 11 case itself continued after the effective date, with omnibus hearings and enforcement proceedings later in 2026. ## Leadership - Analysis: Knoa's announcement of 1 May 2026 from Stamford, Connecticut named the Foundation's trustees as Paul B. Rothman, who chairs the board, Rahul Gupta and David Saltzman, and the company's directors as Norbert Riedel, chair, Karen Griffin, Patricia Lang, who chairs human resources and compensation, and Mike McHale, who chairs audit. Marc Kesselman, previously the company's chief legal officer and executive vice president for strategy and corporate affairs, was appointed president and chief executive on an interim basis while a permanent chief executive is sought. Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc's 2026 proxy statement lists Riedel, a Jazz director since May 2013, on the board of 'Knoa Pharmaceuticals LLC', a name read here as the same company. [src-057] [src-099] ## What Knoa owes under the plan - Analysis: Knoa is not one of the settlement's payment parties; the family-side payments are owed by named Sackler trusts, family members, estates and entities to the Master Disbursement Trust. Knoa's financial duty under the plan is to pay out its cash: each year after the effective date it pays 96.7% of its governmental distributable cash directly to the Governmental Remediation Trust, 3.3% to the Tribe Trust and its foundation distributable cash to the Knoa Foundation. Purdue's criminal case also looked to such a successor: when Purdue Pharma L.P. was sentenced on 28 April 2026 to $2 billion in forfeiture among other penalties, the Justice Department said it would credit up to $1.775 billion against that amount for value given to governments through the bankruptcy if Purdue ceased to operate in its current form and emerged as a public benefit company or similar entity. All members of the Sackler family are barred from selling opioids in the United States and from any involvement in the new company, as the New York Attorney General stated on the day it began operating. [src-015] [src-042] [src-039] [src-087] [src-101] [src-077] [src-020] [src-005] - Documented: The Disclosure Statement identifies two main funding sources for the creditor trusts: (i) the Shareholder Payment Parties, who agreed to make up to $7.0 billion of cash payments over fifteen years (elsewhere described as paid in cash to the Master Disbursement Trust) and, on a contingent basis, up to $500 million of incremental cash from the sale of their independent associated companies (IACs); and (ii) the Debtors' estates, which the Debtors expected to have approximately $927 million of cash available for distribution on the Effective Date, bringing the total anticipated cash to approximately up to $7.4 billion. Of the Sackler Covered Parties' contribution, $1.5 billion is due on the Effective Date, $500 million on each of the first and second anniversaries, $400 million on the third anniversary and the remaining $3.6 billion in annual installments over the remaining payment years. The Sackler Covered Parties must use commercially reasonable efforts to sell the IACs within seven years, failing which the Master Disbursement Trust may seek a forced sale above an appraised amount. Elsewhere the Disclosure Statement sets the Required Settlement Amount at up to $6.5 billion over fifteen years, allocated $2,762.5 million to the A-Side and $3,737.5 million to the B-Side of the families. [src-015] - Qualification: The $927 million estate figure was a projection that depended on the Effective Date, the cost of the cases and restrictions on cash. The family-side payments are obligations of the Shareholder Payment Parties; the estate cash belongs to the Debtors. The instalments listed for the Sackler Covered Parties add up to $6.5 billion, the Required Settlement Amount; the document does not reconcile its $7.0 billion and $7.4 billion figures with that amount. - Documented: Exhibit A ("Payment Groups and Payment Parties") to the Master Shareholder Settlement Agreement, in the version filed as Doc 8201 (filing stamp 11/07/25) and marked as a counsel's markup, lists only Sackler-side obligors; none of the Debtors appears in it. Side A is organised in eight payment groups of trusts and individual obligors: Theresa Sackler is the third-tier obligor of A-Side Payment Group 1 (second-tier obligors the Theresa E. Sackler 1988 Trust, Theresa E. Sackler 2008 Trust, Millennium Trust and Perelle Bay Trust) and the fourth-tier obligor of Groups 5 to 7; Kathe Sackler is third-tier obligor of Group 2 (Rosetta Trust); Ilene Sackler Lefcourt of Group 3 (trusts including the Ilene S. Lefcourt Trusts 88 and 96); Mortimer D.A. Sackler of Group 4 (trusts including the Mortimer DA Sackler Trust 1996); and Samantha Hunt of Group 8 (trusts including the Samantha Hunt 1996 Trust), with a drafting note that her counsel was to confirm. The exhibit also lists IAC Payment Parties, including Beacon Trust, Hercules Trust, Mundilab Trust and Medichem Trust on the A side. Under the confirmed plan, amounts paid under the Master Shareholder Settlement Agreement are paid to the Master Disbursement Trust. [src-042] [src-039] [src-087] - Qualification: Draft exhibit filed before confirmation; the final Master Shareholder Settlement Agreement was filed later (ECF No. 9132) and its lists may differ. Membership of a payment group is a contractual settlement obligation, not a finding of liability. ## Sources - [src-003] Memorandum decision and order of Judge Colleen McMahon vacating the confirmation order, In re Purdue Pharma L.P., S.D.N.Y. 21-cv-7532 (CM) (master case; filed as Document 148 in related case 7:21-cv-07585), Office of the Connecticut Attorney General, 2021-12-16 - [src-047] Court record source · src-047 - [src-040] Harrington, United States Trustee, Region 2 v. Purdue Pharma L.P., No. 23-124, opinion of the Court and dissent, Supreme Court of the United States, 2024-06-27 - [src-039] Court record source · src-039 - [src-020] Court record source · src-020 - [src-015] Court record source · src-015 - [src-101] Court record source · src-101 - [src-066] Company statement source · src-066 - [src-057] Company statement source · src-057 - [src-005] New York Attorney General press release on the shutdown of Purdue Pharma and the start of Knoa Pharma, Office of the New York State Attorney General, 2026-05-01 - [src-099] Jazz Pharmaceuticals plc proxy statement (definitive), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (EDGAR), 2026-05-29 - [src-042] Court record source · src-042 - [src-087] Court record source · src-087 - [src-077] DOJ press release: opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma sentenced for fraud and kickback conspiracies, U.S. Department of Justice, 2026-04-28