Buyout kings lately are having a harder time bullying creditors with bankruptcy threats.

A year ago, lenders to radio broadcasting giant iHeart Media were getting threats from private-equity firms Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners, who demanded they take a haircut on $15 billion in bonds and cede control of the company in order to avoid a bankruptcy filing.

The lucrative bondholder backlash has surfaced as “private equity has gotten increasingly aggressive in an attempt to save some of their investments,” Seton Hall Law professor Stephen Lubben told The Post. “Basically the attitude seems to be, ‘Let’s see if we can get away with this.’”

Read more of Buyout firms’ bankruptcy threats are losing their bite.