In a decision likely to affect thousands of Madoff investors, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 16, 2011 unanimously upheld the method used by the liquidating trustee for Bernard L.

For some years, companies in the United Kingdom have utilized a statutory process called solvent schemes of arrangement. These schemes amount to what in the United States is called a “cram down” voluntary reorganization of financially distressed, but solvent, debtors. They impose upon creditors reductions in the amount owed to them outside the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Rhode Island adopted a similar statutory scheme, which became effective in 2004.

On June 13, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation ("PBGC") released a final rule that, in most cases, will reduce the amount of pension benefits guaranteed under the agency's single-employer insurance program when a pension plan is terminated in a bankruptcy case. The rule will also decrease the amount of pension benefits given priority in bankruptcy.

CURRENTLY, NEGOTIATION and documentation of claims trades remain largely unregulated, with only limited oversight from bankruptcy courts and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Generally, the bankruptcy court’s, or the claims agent’s, involvement in claims trading is ministerial, i.e., maintaining the claims register and recording transfers if the form complies with the rule. Only if there is an objection to a claims transfer does the bankruptcy court become involved in the substance of a transfer.

On Monday, August 8, 2011, United States Bankruptcy Court Judge Mary Walrath ruled that Harry & David Holdings Inc. the Oregon-based gourmet food and gift company, can terminate its pension plan as part of a pre-arranged bankruptcy plan and emerge from bankruptcy free of its accumulated pension liability. The company convinced the court that it had to terminate the plan in order to successfully emerge from bankruptcy.

The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, overseeing the bankruptcy cases of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (“LBHI”) and its affiliated debtors (collectively, the “Debtors”), entered an order on Aug.

Summary

Introduction

In this en banc decision, the Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Chancery’s decision that laches, instead of the applicable statute of limitations, applied to the plaintiff corporate officer’s claim for indemnification, and thus upheld the Court of Chancery’s decision that plaintiff was entitled to indemnification for certain actually and reasonably incurred attorneys’ fees and expenses.

Argentine debtors are now subject to employee take-over under the nation’s recently amended bankruptcy code, signed into law by the nation’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Argentine Bankruptcy Law 24,522 as amended by Law No. 26,684,1 allows employees of a bankrupt company who have established a union or cooperative to (i) suspend the enforcement of claims that are filed by creditors for up to 2 years and (ii) ask the judge to appoint the cooperative as the successor to the debtor’s management.