Part 1 – Celsius Bankruptcy

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to impact the U.S. economy at a level which could ultimately rival or surpass the global financial crisis of 2009. Reports from commercial landlords suggest that a majority of retail and restaurant tenants, perhaps as many as 75%, failed to make payments of rent due on April 1^st.

Courts are often faced with the situation in which affiliated debtors file for Chapter 11 reorganization and request to have their cases jointly administered. While joint administration does not, without more, cause substantive consolidation of the assets and liabilities of the corporate group, jointly-administered debtors may propose a single plan of reorganization that establishes the recovery for all of the debtors’ creditors.

On 1 September 2016, the Korean Court issued orders commencing rehabilitation proceedings for Hanjin and staying proceedings against it and its assets (Korean Orders).

The purpose of the Korean proceeding is to rehabilitate the insolvent debtor company, Hanjin, by restructuring its debts. The debts are restructured according to a rehabilitation plan approved by the creditors and the Korean Court. The aim is to protect Hanjin while it trades out of its debt.

BACKGROUND

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (the “Second Circuit”) recently followed the emerging trend of affording the safe harbor protections of section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code (the “Code”) to intermediary financial institutions acting as only conduits in otherwise voidable transactions.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit (the “Eleventh Circuit”) has reinstated the controversial 2009 decision of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida (the “Bankruptcy Court”) that required a group of lenders to disgorge $421 million as fraudulent conveyances under sections 548 and 550 of the Bankruptcy Code.

We reported to you last month a significant development in the matter of In re TOUSA USA, when the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued its opinion and order reversing the controversial holdings of the Bankruptcy Court in the TOUSA chapter 11 case as to the so-called “Transeastern Lenders,” a group of lenders who had previously been ordered to disgorge nearly ½ billion dollars received in repayment of indebtedness which the Court found constituted a fraudulent transfer under Sections 548 and 550 of the Bankruptcy Code.

On February 11, 2011, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida reversed the controversial decision of the Bankruptcy Court in In re TOUSA that required a group of lenders to disgorge nearly a half billion dollars in repayment of indebtedness which the Bankruptcy Court found constituted a fraudulent transfer under Sections 548 and 550 of the Bankruptcy Code.