The administrators of Avanti Communications Limited (the “Company”) sought directions from the High Court as to whether purported fixed charges in favour of the secured lenders to the satellite operating business should be recharacterised as floating charges (In the matter of Avanti Communications Limited (In administration) [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch)).
Summary of decision
Although the IMF recently announced at Davos that it would upgrade its global economic forecasts, with an improvement predicted in the later part of 2023 and into 2024, times remain difficult for many companies and their lenders – and are likely to remain so for a while yet.
The Bankruptcy Protector
The filing of a bankruptcy petition under any chapter of the Bankruptcy Code creates the ‘automatic stay,’ which prevents creditors from taking any further action against either the debtor or the debtor’s assets during the bankruptcy. Seasoned bankruptcy attorneys know that a violation of the automatic stay is a serious matter and, because of this, appropriately advise their clients on complying with, or enforcing, the stay. However, stay violations can inadvertently occur even when all reasonable and necessary precautions are taken.
The Bankruptcy Protector
The recent English case Arlington Infrastructure Ltd (in administration) and another v Woolrych and others demonstrates the importance of a secured creditor obtaining any consent necessary under the terms of intercreditor arrangements before taking enforcement action.
The facts of the case
At the very end of a recent opinion, the First Circuit seemingly provided guidance on how bondholders can attack the constitutionality of Puerto Rico’s debt restricting act, PROMESA (The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act). However, the apparent guidance offered by the First Circuit may only be fool’s gold.
A dispute over whether the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”) can order one of Northern California’s largest natural gas and electric companies – Pacific Gas & Electric Company (“PG&E”) – to reject wholesale power purchase contracts (“PPCs”) will be decided by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California (“Bankruptcy Court”), instead of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (“District Court”).
Bankruptcy Judges cannot impose additional local chapter 13 confirmation requirements beyond those created by Congress, according to the Southern District of Illinois (the “District Court”).
EBITDA first rose to prominence in the US leveraged buy-out craze of the 1980s and has since formed the key metric of leveraged finance transactions across the world. In this article, we focus on its evolution in the European loans market, and explore how financial covenant and certain other protections in loan documentation have been eroded in recent years as a result of those changes.
This article first appeared in the November edition of Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law.