In Short

In Short

A powerful tool afforded to a bankruptcy trustee or a chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP") is the power to recover pre-bankruptcy transfers that are avoidable under federal bankruptcy law (or sometimes state law) because they were either made with the intent to defraud creditors or are constructively fraudulent because the debtor-transferor received less than reasonably equivalent value in exchange and was insolvent at the time, or was rendered insolvent as a consequence of the transfer.

The scope of the Bankruptcy Code's "safe harbor" shielding certain securities, commodity, or forward-contract payments from avoidance as fraudulent transfers has long been a magnet for controversy, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court suggested (but did not hold) in Merit Mgmt. Grp., LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc., 138 S. Ct.

Debtors in non-U.S. bankruptcy or restructuring proceedings commonly seek to shield their U.S. assets from creditor collection efforts by seeking "recognition" of those proceedings in the United States in a case under chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code. If a U.S. bankruptcy court recognizes the debtor's foreign proceeding, the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay prevents creditor collection efforts, including the commencement or continuation of any U.S. litigation involving the debtor or its U.S. assets. A U.S.

In a 2021 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revived nearly 100 lawsuits seeking to recover fraudulent transfers made as part of the Madoff Ponzi scheme. In one of the latest chapters in that resurrected litigation, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held in Picard v. ABN AMRO Bank NV (In re Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC), 654 B.R. 224 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.

One year ago, we wrote that 2022 would be remembered in the corporate bankruptcy world for the "crypto winter" that descended in November 2022 with the spectacular collapse of FTX Trading Ltd., Alameda Research, and approximately 130 other affiliated companies that ignited the meltdown of many other platforms, exchanges, lenders, and mining operations because they did business with FTX.

Because bankruptcy courts were created by Congress rather than under Article III of the U.S. Constitution, there is a disagreement over whether bankruptcy courts, like other federal courts, have "inherent authority" to impose sanctions for civil contempt on parties that refuse to comply with their orders. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit revisited this debate in In re Markus, 78 F.4th 554 (2nd Cir. 2023).

Bankruptcy and appellate courts disagree over the standard that should apply to a request for payment of a break-up fee or expense reimbursement to the losing bidder in a sale of assets outside the ordinary course of the debtor's business. Some apply a "business judgment" standard, while others require that the proposed payments satisfy the more rigorous standard applied to administrative expense claims.

Section 1124(2) of the Bankruptcy Code gives chapter 11 debtors a valuable tool for use in situations where long-term prepetition debt carries a significantly lower interest rate than the rates available at the time of emergence from bankruptcy. Under this section, in a chapter 11 plan, the debtor can "cure" any defaults under the relevant agreement and "reinstate" the maturity date and other terms of the original agreement, thus enabling the debtor to "lock in" a favorable interest rate in a prepetition loan agreement upon bankruptcy emergence.