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Fram falls under the First Brands Group umbrella. (George Frey/Bloomberg)

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Before the world could learn much about Patrick James, who founded and led the auto supplier First Brands Group that fell into bankruptcy last month, he was gone.

James’ resignation as CEO, after a week that saw the pain from its sudden collapse reach financial firms around the world, leaves the work of untangling the company’s complex and opaque finances to Charles Moore, a restructuring expert hired last month during rushed negotiations between the company and its top Wall Street creditors.

James, through a spokesperson, said he remains “deeply committed to the success of the business and the maximization of value of its customers, suppliers, employees and lenders.” Moore, in a separate statement, emphasized that the “immediate priority is to ensure stability and dependability.”

In the roughly two weeks since First Brands filed for bankruptcy, with more than $10 billion owed to some of Wall Street’s biggest names, much of the intrigue has centered around James, who was born in Malaysia, attended college in Ohio and has virtually no online presence. Through a series of aggressive debt-fueled acquisitions, he built First Brands into an auto parts conglomerate.

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All the while, Moore, a 25-year turnaround veteran at Alvarez & Marsal who has restructured auto suppliers and the city of Detroit, has laid out in plain terms the many obstacles facing the company.

In bankruptcy court in recent days, Moore has said that certain assets backing inventory finance agreements may have been commingled with collateral securing the company’s asset-based lending facility. Special advisers are probing whether some of the collateral used to raise trade debt was pledged more than once. An independent committee is investigating roughly $2.3 billion in off-balance sheet financing that one creditor alleged has “simply vanished.”

All those challenges make First Brands’ goal — “to facilitate a sale process designed to deliver the best possible outcome for our stakeholders” — a substantial undertaking.

When First Brands filed Chapter 11 at the end of September, Moore’s initial focus was on winning court approval of a $500 million loan so the company can make payroll and keep operating. A judge approved the funding, but restricted how much it could initially spend to $175 million, according to court records.

A lawyer for lenders has described First Brands’ descent into bankruptcy as “a controlled crash landing,” saying their teams did an estimated 10% to 20% of their typical due diligence before handing over emergency financing to keep the company running.

“Due to the company’s rapidly declining liquidity and the time needed for potential investors to complete further diligence, it became clear that any potential transaction would need to be implemented in court,” Moore said in a filing.

Written by Eliza Ronalds-Hannon, Steven Church and Luca Casiraghi