As an airline manager, he gained a reputation of union acrimony, stemming from his management during the 1983 bankruptcy of Continental, during which he utilized bankruptcy law to abrogate union contracts and seize employee pension funds (the latter a practice which subsequently became illegal). Continental survived until its merger with United Airlines in 2010. Lorenzo unsuccessfully facilitated a similar scenario at Eastern Airlines, a strike and bankruptcy which led first to Lorenzo being stripped of his authority at Eastern Airlines and seeing a trustee named to oversee the carrier, then to that airline's permanent shutdown in 1991. Lorenzo's airline history is contentious, as he is both "despised by unions and admired by airline strategists." In 1990, after Lorenzo liquidated his holdings after 18 years in the airline industry, Alfred E. Kahn, the "main architect of airline deregulation," offered this perspective on Lorenzo's leadership: "I don't think there is any question that he saved Continental, but his tactics obviously didn't work when he took over Eastern."