1. State of the Restructuring Market

1.1 Market Trends and Changes

State of the Restructuring and Insolvency Market

There were 27,359 insolvencies in France as of the end of September 2021, down 25.1% from the same period in 2020, and down 47.9% from September 2019. Such reduction is relatively stable across all sectors, including those most severely affected by the health-related restrictions, such as accommodation and food services (down 44.2% year-on-year) and trade (down 28.1% year on year).

Fewer Insolvencies for More Opportunities

At the end of 2021, corporate bankruptcies (for most company sizes and in most sectors) were at their lowest level compared to the pre-COVID-19 figures from 2019, with a 50% drop in insolvency proceedings and a 10% decrease in pre-insolvency situations. This was largely due to the temporary impact of government emergency measures and support, including:

The Bankruptcy Code confers upon debtors or trustees, as the case may be, the power to avoid certain preferential or fraudulent transfers made to creditors within prescribed guidelines and limitations. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Mexico recently addressed the contours of these powers through a recent decision inU.S. Glove v. Jacobs, Adv. No. 21-1009, (Bankr. D.N.M.

In In re Smith, (B.A.P. 10th Cir., Aug. 18, 2020), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently joined the majority of circuit courts of appeals in finding that a creditor seeking a judgment of nondischargeability must demonstrate that the injury caused by the prepetition debtor was both willful and malicious under Section 523(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Factual Background

In a recent decision, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held that claim disallowance issues under Section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code "travel with" the claim, and not with the claimant. Declining to follow a published district court decision from the same federal district, the bankruptcy court found that section 502(d) applies to disallow a transferred claim regardless of whether the transferee acquired its claim through an assignment or an outright sale. See In re Firestar Diamond, 615 B.R. 161 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2020).

InIn re Juarez, 603 B.R. 610 (9th Cir. BAP 2019), the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed a question of first impression in the circuit with respect to property that is exempt from creditor reach: it adopted the view that, under the "new value exception" to the "absolute priority rule," an individual Chapter 11 debtor intending to retain such property need not make a "new value" contribution covering the value of the exemption.

Background

In In re Palladino, 942 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2019), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed whether a debtor receives “reasonably equivalent value” in exchange for paying his adult child’s college tuition. The Palladino court answered this question in the negative, thereby contributing to the growing circuit split regarding the avoidability of debtors’ college tuition payments for their adult children as constructively fraudulent transfers.

Background

In a matter of first impression, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of New York recently analyzed whether a debtor may exempt from her bankruptcy estate a retirement account that was bequeathed to her upon the death of her parent. In In re Todd, 585 B.R. 297 (Bankr. N.D.N.Y 2018), the court addressed an objection to a debtor’s claim of exemption in an inherited retirement account, and held that the property was not exempt under New York and federal law.

In Kaye v. Blue Bell Creameries (In re BFW Liquidation), 899 F.3d 1178 (11th Cir. 2018), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that a liability for an allegedly preferential transfer may be reduced by the amount of new value given, regardless of whether that new value has already been repaid by the debtor before its bankruptcy filing.

On June 4, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in Lamar Archer & Cofrin LLP v. Appling,[1] resolving a circuit split on the issue of whether a debtor’s statement about a single asset constitutes “a statement respecting the debtor’s financial condition” for the purposes of 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(2).