I don’t know if Congress foresaw, when it enacted new Subchapter V of Chapter 11 of the Code[1] in the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (“SBRA”), that debtors in pending cases would seek to convert or redesignate their cases as Subchapter V cases when SBRA became effective on February 19, 2020, but it was foreseeable.

On Friday August 7th, the NAACP filed a motion to intervene in the chapter 11 bankruptcy cases of Purdue Pharma L.P. and its affiliated debtors (collectively, “Debtors”).[1] The Motion argues that “[i]ntervention is warranted because the NAACP has an interest to ensure that the settlement allocates appropriate relief to communities of color adversely affected by the Opioid Crisis.

The Second Circuit affirmed the judgment of lower courts upholding the application of certain swap agreement safe harbors in section 560 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (the Bankruptcy Code).

The increasing number of high-profile bankruptcies across a number of commercial hubs has brought renewed focus on important questions of jurisdiction arising out of the tension between local insolvency regimes on the one hand, and parties’ arbitration agreements on the other.

In an appeal of a bankruptcy court’s decision, a district court judge recently addressed the treatment of the “straddle year” for federal income tax under the Bankruptcy Code, which “does not appear to have been decided by any appellate court.” In re Affirmative Ins. Holdings Inc. United States v. Beskrone, No. 15-12136-CSS, 2020 WL 4287375, at *1 (D. Del. July 27, 2020).

Since the end of the first quarter of 2020, bankruptcy professionals have been planning for a substantial increase in business bankruptcies. The newest statistics tell us that the wait is over. These bankruptcy filings follow the sustained economic contraction rooted in the COVID pandemic. But it would be too simplistic to say that COVID is the sole cause of this trend. Most of the businesses that have filed faced other challenges, such as heavy debt burdens, deteriorating markets or strategic missteps.

Our February 26 post [1] reported on the first case dealing with the question whether a debtor in a pending Chapter 11 case may redesignate it as a case under Subchapter V, [2] the new subchapter of Chapter 11 adopted by the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (“SBRA”), which became effective on February 19.

Section 550 of the Bankruptcy Code provides that, when a transfer is avoided under one of several other sections of the Code, a trustee may recover “the property transferred, or, if the court so orders, the value of such property” from “the initial transferee of such transfer,” “the entity for whose benefit such transfer was made,” or “any immediate or mediate transferee of such initial transferee.” 11 U.S.C. § 550(a).

The number of so-called mega-bankruptcies filed during the first half of the year tells only part of the story. The pain is not just at the top, but spreads across multiple sectors of the economy. Overall, business bankruptcy filings are 30% higher than they have been at any time during the last 5 years. And, with attempts to re-start the economy already sputtering, the news during the second half could be worse.