Key Takeaways

Key Takeaways

On June 23, the New York County Supreme Court issued a rare preliminary injunction temporarily halting a mezzanine lender’s UCC foreclosure sale of the Mark Hotel in New York City because the procedures for the foreclosure sale were not commercially reasonable in light of conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (D2 Mark LLC v. Orei VI Investments LLC, 2020 WL 3432950 (2020)).

On 2 June 2020, Mr Justice Morgan handed down his judgment in the case of Re: A Company [2020] EWHC 1406 (Ch) in which a High Street retailer (whose identity is not disclosed) applied to restrain the presentation of a winding-up petition based on the provisions of the yet-to-be-enacted Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill 2020 (the “Bill”).

The Government published its Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill on 20 May 2020, which will implement the most significant reform to the UK’s insolvency framework in decades. In addition to permanent landmark changes, including introducing a business rescue moratorium and new restructuring plan, the Bill contains a number of temporary measures to help businesses respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

Lenders should view as cautionary tales two recently handed down decisions regarding UCC-1 financing statements and the perfection of security interests. On December 20, 2019, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Kansas in In re Preston held that security interests in personal property were unperfected because the UCC-1 incorrectly set forth the debtor’s name. On January 2, 2020, the U.S.

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.

In a win for lenders, on March 18, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held that an unambiguous make-whole provision in a loan contract was enforceable under New York law, despite the fact that the lender had accelerated the loan. In re 1141 Realty Owner LLC, 2019 WL 1270818 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar. 18, 2019).

Background

On February 25, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision holding that a trustee is not barred by either the presumption against extraterritoriality or by international comity principles from recovering property from a foreign subsequent transferee that received the property from a foreign initial transferee.