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The EMEA Determinations Committee's recent bankruptcy determination involving Selecta CDS provides additional insight on the types of chapter 15 filings that are likely to trigger Credit Events.

Courts sometimes disagree over whether provisions in a borrower's organizational documents designed to prevent the borrower from filing for bankruptcy are enforceable as a matter of federal public policy or applicable state law. There has been a handful of court rulings addressing this issue in recent years, with mixed results.

"Safe harbors" in the Bankruptcy Code designed to insulate non-debtor parties to financial contracts from the consequences that normally ensue when a counterparty files for bankruptcy have been the focus of a considerable amount of scrutiny as part of evolving developments in the pandemic-driven downturn. One of the most recent developments concerning this issue in the courts was the subject of a ruling handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in connection with the landmark chapter 11 cases of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ("Lehman") and its affiliates.

The practice of conferring "derivative standing" on official creditors' committees to assert claims on behalf of a bankruptcy estate in cases where the debtor or a bankruptcy trustee is unwilling or unable to do so is a well-established means of generating value for the estate from litigation recoveries. However, in a series of recent decisions, the Delaware bankruptcy courts have limited the practice in cases where applicable non-bankruptcy state law provides that creditors do not have standing to bring claims on behalf of certain entities.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York recently added some weight to the majority rule on a hot-button issue for claims traders. InIn re Firestar Diamond, Inc., 615 B.R. 161 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2020), the court ruled that a transferred claim can be disallowed under section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code even if the entity holding the claim is not the recipient of a voidable transfer. According to the court, claim disallowance under section 502(d) "rests on the claim and not the claim holder."