Judge Robert Gerber will be stepping down at the end of this year, ending a storied judicial career highlighted by his oversight of the 2009 chapter 11 case of General Motors Corporation (“Old GM”).
Of general interest is the appeal in the case of Horton v Henry, on which we reported in our January 2015 update. In Horton, the High Court declined to follow a previous ruling, and decided that a bankrupt could not be compelled to access his pension savings to pay off creditors.
Declining to follow a 2012 decision, the High Court has ruled that a bankrupt’s unexercised rights to draw his pension did not represent income to which he was entitled within the meaning of the Insolvency Act 1986, and so did not form part of the bankruptcy estate.
Background
There were nearly a million bankruptcy cases filed by individuals and businesses in 2014. It is safe to say that only the tiniest fraction of such debtors have any familiarity with the Supreme Court’s decision in Stern v.
Energy Future Holdings (EFH), f/k/a TXU Corp., an energy company centered in Texas, was taken private in 2007 in the largest leveraged buyout transaction that has ever taken place. The deal was largely predicated on an anticipated rise in natural gas prices; when prices instead plummeted the company, which had borrowed nearly $40 billion, was left with a massively unbalanced capital structure. The chapter 11 cases of EFH and its subsid
One month ago, Judge Christopher Klein ruled in the city of Stockton, CA bankruptcy case that public employee pension obligations can be impaired in municipal bankruptcy cases under Chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code. Last week, however, Judge Klein approved the plan of adjustment for Stockton that left public pension obligations intact over the vociferous objection of Franklin Investments, a major city bondholder whose claim was substantially reduced. The confirmation of the Stockton plan underscores that even as there now appears to be a sound legal foundatio
The perception that public employee pension obligations cannot be impaired in bankruptcy suffered a damaging blow several months ago in the City of Detroit bankruptcy case, and has now been fatally wounded by
General Motors LLC (“New GM”) came into being in the summer of 2009, when it acquired substantially all of the assets of General Motors Corporation (“Old GM”) in a sale undertaken pursuant to section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. The July 2009 Sale Order approved by U.S.
Again, of interest to all schemes providing defined benefits is the recent settlement in the litigation involving the Lehman Brothers Scheme, where the payment of £184 million, representing costs of the buying-out benefits, has been agreed.
Following a detailed investigation by TPR commencing in 2008, and a legal battle through the hierarchy of courts up to the Supreme Court (SC), members of the Lehman Brothers Pension Scheme will receive their full benefits after a settlement was reached on 18 August 2014.