In a January 2023 opinion,1 the Southern District of New York Bankruptcy Court overseeing the bankruptcy case of Latin American airline Avianca and certain of its affiliates sanctioned over 150 of the airline’s Brazilian and Columbian creditors who had filed proofs of claim in the bankruptcy case finding t

Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the decline in passengers travelling to Hong Kong, Hong Kong Airlines (HKA) has become the latest carrier to undergo a debt restructuring. Its restructuring plan was sanctioned by the English court on 9 December 2022 and its scheme of arrangement was sanctioned by the Hong Kong court on 14 December 2022.

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In a decision that may provide much-needed boundaries around the permissibility of debtors created from “out-of-the-box” prepetition corporate transactions, on January 30, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a unanimous opinion dismissing Johnson & Johnson subsidiary LTL Management, LLC’s (“LTL”) chapter 11 case pending in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey as not being filed in good faith.¹

In a decision likely to have significant impact on certain types of bankruptcy filings going forward, this morning, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the dismissal of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy case filed by Johnson & Johnson affiliate LTL Management LLC.

This article first appeared in Accountancy Daily on 20 January 2023.

With supply chain problems, war in Europe and other issues leading to higher inflation and an increasingly uncertain economic outlook, this article explores the options available to companies experiencing financial distress.

In late December, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware issued an opinion in In re: Mallinckrodt PLC affirming the Mallinckrodt bankruptcy court's November 2021 decision that the debtor could discharge certain post-petition, post-confirmation royalty obligations for the sale of the company's Acthar gel.

The district court's affirmation serves as a reminder to holders of intellectual property that a debtor's fresh start under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code could trump royalty obligations that are found to be contingent claims arising as of the time of the transaction.

In a January 5, 2023 opinion from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the panel held the Just Energy bankruptcy court erred in exercising jurisdiction over the debtor’s suit to recover Winter Storm Uri payments made to ERCOT. The Fifth Circuit found the underlying issue—i.e., the propriety of ERCOT and PUCT’s pricing—to be precisely the type of controversy that should be decided in the manner carefully prescribed by the Texas legislature, and not be second-guessed by the bankruptcy court.

Cryptocurrency in Celsius’ Earn Accounts belongs to the bankruptcy estate, and not to the depositors who placed it there, according to a January 4 memorandum opinion from Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York.

In late December 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Delaware issued an opinion affirming the Mallinckrodt bankruptcy court’s November 2021 decision that the debtor could discharge certain post-petition, post-confirmation royalty obligations for the sale of Acthar Gel.

In East-West Logistics LLP v Melars Group Ltd [2022] EWCA Civ 1419 the Court of Appeal once again considered the test for establishing the location of a debtor's centre of main interests (COMI) for the purposes of the Recast Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings 2015/848. The case was a second appeal considering whether to uphold the dismissal of a winding up order on the grounds that the debtor's COMI was not in the United Kingdom.