Summary
The bankruptcy Pegasus: stalking horse agreements in aviation
Summary
If a person presents a petition for their own bankruptcy (“self-petition”), are there any safeguards to ensure that the self-petition is genuine, as opposed to a cynical device by the person to buy themselves time to pay, or to give themselves some negotiating position with their creditors?
This interesting question was considered in a recent Hong Kong judgment.
In our original article, we prefaced that Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”) would likely utilize the Texas Two Step to attempt to resolve its tort liabilities related to talc powder.1 On October 12, 2021, J&J did just that. The company used Texas’s divisive merger statute to spinoff the talc liabilities into a new entity, LTL Management, LLC (“LTL”).
Summary
With government support instigated by the Covid-19 pandemic coming to an end, there is an inevitability that some hotel owners will sadly not have the liquidity to continue to operate in the medium term. Eager investors are seeing opportunities and are waiting to deploy capital. We examine the main considerations for investors who are looking to purchase distressed hotel assets out of an insolvency process.
General Introduction
In a recent post, I discussed three situations in which a debtor in bankruptcy might find itself dispossessed of assets that appeared to be property of the bankruptcy estate. This article expands on that general idea and presents a compendium of situations in which creditors or circumstances may deprive a debtor of assets or their value.
Editor’s Note: this is likely not an asset upon which you should base your reorganization – see below.
While the world wrestles with the day-to-day realities of the pandemic, 2021 will bring further challenges. With the memory of the litigious and regulatory aftermath of the global financial crisis still fresh, what should be on your radar?
1. Disputed margin calls and close-outs
We discussed in the March 2020 edition of the Texas Bar Journal1 the bankruptcy court ruling by Judge Craig A. Gargotta of San Antonio in In Re First River Energy LLC that oil and gas producers in Texas do not hold perfected security interests in oil and gas well proceeds, notwithstanding the Texas Legislature’s efforts to protect producers and royalty owners following the downturn in the 1980s. The Fifth Circuit recently reaffirmed Judge Gargotta’s decision.
The new National Security and Investment Bill, which aims to provide the Government with the necessary powers to scrutinise and intervene in business transactions to protect national security, will introduce a mandatory notification regime across 17 sectors in the UK economy. Although the Bill provides a carve-out for rights exercisable by administrators, insolvency practitioners will still need to be mindful of the risks that the Bill may have on distressed M&A transactions, which may be rendered void if captured by the regime and the notification requirements not complied with.
This article sets out some reflections on the decision of the Supreme Court in Sevilleja v Marex Financial Limited [2020] UKSC 31 from July 2020 which clarifies the scope of the so-called ‘reflective loss’ rule. The first instance judgment raised some comment-worthy issues regarding the economic torts which were not the subject of any appeal.