Fulltext Search

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit wasted no time getting the new year off to a roaring start through its ruling in In re LTL Mgmt., LLC, Case No. 22-2003, 2023 WL 1098189 (3d Cir. Jan. 30, 2023). In LTL, the Third Circuit affirmatively dismissed the so-called “Texas Two-Step” by which a solvent corporation had tried to cabin potentially billions of dollars of mass tort liability through an internal corporate restructuring.

In that ruling, the Third Circuit determined that:

As 2023 gets underway, we've taken the opportunity here to look at what we saw in the European distressed market in 2022, as well as looking ahead to what we expect to see in the months to come.

On January 4, 2023, Judge Glenn of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York issued a much-awaited decision in the Celsius Network LLC (along with its affiliated debtors, “Celsius” or the “Debtors”) chapter 11 cases relating to the ownership of crypto assets deposited by customers in the Celsius “Earn” rewards program accounts.

In this client alert we set out some of the key lessons from the recent judgment in ABT Auto Investments Ltd v Aapico Investment Pte Ltd [2022] EWHC 2839 (Comm), which considers the validity of appropriation as an enforcement power pursuant to Regulation 17 of the Financial Collateral Arrangements (No. 2) Regulations 2003 (“FCARs”), the duty imposed on a collateral-taker by Regulation 18 of the FCARs in connection with the valuation of a collateral subject to appropriation, and provides useful guidance on what is “commercially reasonable” in this context.

Over the span of two weeks in July 2022, two of the largest retail-facing cryptocurrency platforms, Celsius and Voyager, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The landscape of digital assets, blockchain and related technologies is constantly evolving. Each quarter, Ropes & Gray attorneys analyze government enforcement and private litigation actions, rulings, settlements, and other key developments in this space. We distill the flood of industry headlines so that you can identify and manage risk more effectively.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (“SC”) has recently handed down a decision in the case of BTI v Sequana, dealing with the powers and duties of company directors. The appeal was expected to be of considerable importance.

This alert is especially relevant to companies, and directors of companies, in financial distress, as well as creditors and insolvency practitioners.

Key Takeaways