Many businesses continue to experience unprecedented pressure on their cash flow given, among other things, the continued fall-out from the global pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, rising interest rates, the end of cheap debt and the expected global downturn.
To mitigate their exposure to personal liability, it's important that directors of insolvent companies or companies in the zone of insolvency comply with their duties to act in the best interests of the company as a whole. This includes the interests of creditors as a whole.
Background
The Cayman Government has restricted entry to the Island since mid-March and is currently operating a curfew system day and night for residents other than essential workers, with the exception of exercise or essential trips such as to the supermarket or for medical reasons.
Tolstoy warned that “if you look for perfection, you’ll never be content”; but Tolstoy wasn’t a bankruptcy lawyer. In the world of secured lending, perfection is paramount. A secured lender that has not properly perfected its lien can lose its collateral and end up with unsecured status if its borrower files bankruptcy.
Judge Swain’s decision in the PROMESA Title III bankruptcy proceeding of the Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority (“PRHTA”) that a federal bankruptcy court cannot compel a municipal debtor to apply special revenues to post-petition debt service payments on special revenue bonds has generated controversy and caused some market participants to question whether, if the decision is upheld by the First Circuit on appeal, the perception that special revenue bonds have special rights in bankruptcy remains justified.
The linked Mintz Levin client advisory discusses a recent Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that held a “make-whole” optional redemption premium to be due upon a refinancing of corporate debt following its automatic acceleration upon bankruptcy.
Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Commonwealth of Puerto Rico v. Franklin California Tax-Free Trustputs an end to one of Puerto Rico’s multi-pronged efforts to deleverage itself.
A few thoughts on Tuesday’s oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in the litigation over whether Puerto Rico’s Public Corporations Debt Enforcement and Recovery Act, an insolvency statute for certain of its government instrumentalities, is void, as the lower federal courts held, under Section 903 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code:
A draft of the U.S. Treasury’s proposed debt restructuring legislation began circulating earlier today. The draft legislation would give Puerto Rico, as well as other U.S. territories, and their municipalities access to U.S. bankruptcy court under a new chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (so-called “Super Chapter 9”) as well as making Puerto Rico’s instrumentalities (but not Puerto Rico itself) potentially eligible to file for bankruptcy under existing Chapter 9.
It is said that muddy water is best cleared by leaving it be. The Supreme Court’s December 4 decision to review the legality of Puerto Rico’s local bankruptcy law, the Recovery Act, despite a well-reasoned First Circuit Court of Appeals opinion affirming the U.S. District Court in San Juan’s decision voiding the Recovery Act on the grounds that it conflicts with Section 903 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, suggests, at a minimum, that at least four of the Justices deemed the questions raised too interesting to let the First Circuit have the last word.