With cov-lite financings at record highs, debt holders will need to be proactive in maximising recoveries
Will the last person leaving please turn out the lites?
Cov-lite loans can leave lenders with limited restructuring options, but creative lenders will still find ways to bring debtors to the table, partners Ian Wallace and Christian Pilkington of global law firm White & Case LLP explain
The Insolvency Working Group of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”)1 has been busy this past year, working on three new model laws and developing work on at least two possible future projects.2 The Insolvency Working Group is responsible for drafting the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (the “CBI Model Law”) in 1997, which has since been adopted in 46 countries and is under consideration in several others. In 2005, the United States adopted the CBI Model Law as Chapter 15 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.
On 28 March 2019 the European Parliament adopted a Directive on insolvency, restructuring and second chance (the Directive). This project has had a long tail, following a Commission Recommendation issued in 2014 and, after that had no impact, a draft Directive in November 2016. This draft Directive is now about come to fruition. It has three main aims
1. to ensure that member states have a preventive restructuring framework – which includes a restructuring plan;
Article 55 of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) (2014/59/EU) requires Member States to ensure that a bail-in clause is included in agreements containing liabilities of a regulated Member State financial institution which are governed by the law of a third country.
As more Turkish companies begin to report liquidity issues and economic pressures begin to bite, successful financial restructurings are likely to become increasingly critical to the prosperity of the Turkish economy
Only time will tell whether local processes will provide a suitable toolkit for large-scale corporate restructurings, or whether other international restructurings processes may also have a role to play.
Welcome to this month's edition of our commercial and tech update, covering a wide range of topics from Facebook's lacklustre approach in dealing with IP infringement to further confirmation on the Courts' approach to liquidated damages.
(Mis)Adventures in advertising
Certainty is a key element in any business planning. For corporate restructuring practitioners who are planning or working on cross border transactions, the uncertainty relating to Brexit and the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union ("EU") may have long-term significant consequences and a "no-deal" Brexit (without a withdrawal agreement and the certainty of a transition period) will have immediate and significant consequences for any such cross-border transaction.
Although they disagree about the severity, economists and market watchers generally agree that the U.S. economy is headed for a slow-down. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, industrial production and retail sales are at all-time highs, exceeding levels seen before the 2008 recession. Unemployment rates are at the lowest levels since November 2000. So why the gloomy predictions for 2019 and beyond? Historically, retail sales, industrial production and employment are at their peaks right before a recession.
On 18 December 2018 the English Court of Appeal held in the case of OJSC International Bank of Azerbaijan that the rule in Gibbs is still a fundamental tenet of English insolvency law and not to be sidestepped by the Cross-Border Insolvency Regulations.
Facts
The facts in summary are these: