This article provides information regarding what will now happen to the operations and business of the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB UK) after the sale (the Sale) of SVB UK to HSBC’s ring-fenced UK subsidiary, HSBC UK Bank plc (HSBC).
The Bank of England (the BoE) will apply to put the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB UK) into Bank Insolvency, which is a modified version of liquidation under Part 2 of the Banking Act 2009, on Sunday 12 March 2023 unless a buyer can be found for SVB UK’s business and assets.
The situation remains fluid and this represents our advice based on public announcements by the BoE and SVB UK that we are aware of as at 12pm on 12 March 2023.
On October 17, 2022, Justice Andrea Masley of the NY Supreme Court issued a decision and order denying all but one of the motion to dismiss claims filed by Boardriders, Oaktree Capital (an equity holder, term lender, and “Sponsor” under the credit agreement), and an ad hoc group of lenders (the “Participating Lenders”) that participated in an “uptiering” transaction that included new money investments and roll-ups of existing term loan debt into new priming debt that would sit at the top of the company’s capital structure.
On October 14, 2022, the Fifth Circuit issued its decision in Ultra Petroleum, granting favorable outcomes to “unimpaired” creditors that challenged the company’s plan of reorganization and argued for payment (i) of a ~$200 million make-whole and (ii) post-petition interest at the contractual rate, not the Federal Judgment Rate. At issue on appeal was the Chapter 11 plan proposed by the “massively solvent” debtors—Ultra Petroleum Corp. (HoldCo) and its affiliates, including subsidiary Ultra Resources, Inc.
On July 6, Delaware Bankruptcy Court Judge Craig T. Goldblatt issued a memorandum opinion in the bankruptcy cases of TPC Group, Inc., growing the corpus of recent court decisions tackling “uptiering” and other similar transactions that have been dubbed by some practitioners and investors as “creditor-on-creditor violence.” This topic has been a hot button issue for a few years, playing out in a number of high profile scenarios, from J.Crew and Travelport to Serta Simmons and TriMark, among others.
On August 26, 2020, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the Bankruptcy Code does not require subordination agreements to be strictly enforced in order for a court to confirm a cramdown plan, so long as the plan does not discriminate unfairly.
On December 19, 2019, the Second Circuit held that appellants’ state law constructive fraudulent transfer claims were preempted by virtue of the Bankruptcy Code’s safe harbors that exempt transfers made in connection with a contract for the purchase, sale or loan of a security from being clawed back into the bankruptcy estate for
On January 14, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a decision resolving the question of whether a motion for relief from the automatic stay constitutes a discrete dispute within the bankruptcy that creates a basis for a final appealable ruling, or whether it simply is a controversy that is part of the broader Chapter 11 case, such that appeals would not need to be taken until the conclusion of the Chapter 11 case.
The oil and gas industry in the United States is highly dependent upon an intricate set of agreements that allow oil and gas to be gathered from privately owned land. Historically, the dedication language in oil and gas gathering agreements — through which the rights to the oil or gas in specified land are dedicated — was viewed as being a covenant that ran with the land. That view was put to the test during the wave of oil and gas exploration company bankruptcies that began in 2014.
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