The Supreme Court’s decision in Sevilleja v Marex Financial Ltd [2020] UKSC 31 of 15 July 2020 provided much needed clarity on the scope of the rule against “reflective loss”.

In Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB v Conway & another [2019] UKPC 36, the Privy Council upheld the decision of the Court of Appeal of the Cayman Islands that the appellant bank, SEB, was required to repay redemption payments held to be preferences notwithstanding that it had received the funds in the capacity of nominee, and had already distributed the funds to the beneficiaries without any ability to recover them.

Facts

Until 2013, no circuit court of appeals had weighed in on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s pronouncement in the 203 North LaSalle case that property retained by a junior stakeholder under a cram-down chapter 11 plan in exchange for new value “without benefit of market valuation” violates the “absolute priority rule.” See Bank of Amer. Nat’l Trust & Savings Ass’n v. 203 North LaSalle Street P’ship, 526 U.S. 434 (1999), reversing Matter of 203 North LaSalle Street P’ship, 126 F.3d 955 (7th Cir. 1997).

2012 is shaping up as a year of bankruptcy first impressions for the Ninth Circuit. The court of appeals sailed into uncharted bankruptcy waters twice already this year in the same chapter 11 case. On January 24, the court ruled in In re Thorpe Insulation Co., 2012 WL 178998 (9th Cir. Jan. 24, 2012) ("Thorpe I"), that an appeal by certain nonsettling asbestos insurers of an order confirming a chapter 11 plan was not equitably moot because, among other things, the plan had not been "substantially consummated" under the court's novel construction of that statutory term.