A majority of today’s large Chapter 11 cases are structured as quick Section 363 sales of all the debtor’s assets followed by confirmation of a plan of liquidation, dismissal of the case, or a conversion to a Chapter 7. The purchaser in the sale is often one of the debtor’s prepetition secured or undersecured lenders, which may also act as the debtor-inpossession (DIP) lender and purchase the debtor’s assets through a credit bid, with no cash consideration.
An important decision was issued last week by the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in favor of Squire Patton Boggs’ client CCA Bahamas, Inc. (“CCA Bahamas”). The decision provides guidance on when U.S. bankruptcy courts should dismiss cases filed by foreign debtors. See In re Northshore Mainland Services, Inc., et al., Case No. 15-11402 (KJC).
Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code provides a mechanism for a foreign debtor or representative in non-U.S. insolvency proceedings to protect such debtor’s U.S. assets from U.S. creditors’ collection actions or to stay any litigation commenced in the U.S. The ultimate goal in a chapter 15 proceeding is to preserve the value of the assets of the foreign debtor for the benefit of all its creditors globally.
In Europe each year there are an estimated 200,000 corporate insolvencies. More than half of the companies set up do not survive their first five years of trading and more than 1.7 million jobs are lost every year as a result. One in five of those companies will have international operations that cross national borders.
The European Union (EU) has sought to introduce an element of harmonization across its Member States, to facilitate the effective operation of cross-border insolvencies.
2012 is shaping up as a year of bankruptcy first impressions for the Ninth Circuit. The court of appeals sailed into uncharted bankruptcy waters twice already this year in the same chapter 11 case. On January 24, the court ruled in In re Thorpe Insulation Co., 2012 WL 178998 (9th Cir. Jan. 24, 2012) ("Thorpe I"), that an appeal by certain nonsettling asbestos insurers of an order confirming a chapter 11 plan was not equitably moot because, among other things, the plan had not been "substantially consummated" under the court's novel construction of that statutory term.
As attention shifts from the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 to the global sovereign crisis that currently is affecting much of Europe, lawmakers are scrambling to create new laws and regulations designed to stave off the next financial crisis.[1] Meanwhile, a different threat quietly has been growing in America's states, cities, towns, municipalities, and other political subdivisions.
The Eastern District of Pennsylvania held that secured creditors do not have a right to credit bid their claim when the sale of a debtor’s assets is conducted under a plan of reorganization.