Fulltext Search

The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment of lower courts upholding the application of certain swap agreement safe harbors in section 560 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (the Bankruptcy Code).

The IECA has released its Master Netting Agreement, a state-of-the-art solution ensuring credit exposures are managed and netted under a single, integrated framework that is flexible and easy to implement.

Two United States courts recently issued decisions involving the scope of the Bankruptcy Code’s safe-harbor provision in section 546(e) related to avoidance actions. In one, in the Second Circuit, the court took a broad approach to protect the financial markets, whereas the Seventh Circuit interpreted that statute more narrowly. The Supreme Court is now well-positioned to bring greater clarity to this important area of law.

In a September 18, 2015 order, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York affirmed a bankruptcy court order denying administrative claim treatment to Hudson Energy Services, LLC (“Hudson”) for its retail sales of electricity to the debtor.The decision does not address any “safe-harbor” or forward contract issues, but is among a number of decisions providing for inconsistent treatment of such sales.

J. Paul Getty once said, “Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.” However, with crude oil prices nearly half of what they were a mere six months ago, Getty’s formula may not hold as true as it once did. In the latest EIA STEO Report (April 2015), the DOE projects oil prices for WTI to remain around or below $60 per barrel for the balance of 2015 and grow to $70 per barrel in 2016.

On May 30, 2014, hedge fund Moore Capital (Moore) brought suit against the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy estate (Lehman) in the Southern District of New York bankruptcy court, seeking a declaratory judgment that it acted properly when it terminated swap agreements and setoff termination amounts in the time between the filing of the parent company Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LBHI) and the eve of bankruptcy filings weeks later of Moore’s Lehman counterparties1.

This week the Court of Appeal has heard the long awaited appeal in Jervis and another v Pillar Denton Limited (Game Station) and others, better known as the Game Station case, which (depending on the outcome) may trigger a drastic change to the way in which rent in administration is treated.

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.

An administrators’ appointment automatically ends after one year, unless steps are taken to extend it. The Enterprise Act introduced a new streamlined process for moving quickly and easily from administration to creditors’ voluntary liquidation, just by filing a notice at Companies House under para 83(3) Sch B1 of the Insolvency Act (IA)1986. Problems have arisen where that notice has been filed very late in the day and not received before the administrators’ term of office automatically ends.