The perception that public employee pension obligations cannot be impaired in bankruptcy suffered a damaging blow several months ago in the City of Detroit bankruptcy case, and has now been fatally wounded by
General Motors LLC (“New GM”) came into being in the summer of 2009, when it acquired substantially all of the assets of General Motors Corporation (“Old GM”) in a sale undertaken pursuant to section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. The July 2009 Sale Order approved by U.S.
Given the unfortunate reputation of French courts for awarding substantial damages to employees for unfair terminations, US corporations with operations in France are anxious to limit their financial and legal exposure in case of litigation initiated by their French workforce. How to achieve this efficiently is a far from rhetorical question as French employees frequently pull in the US parent company as a named defendant. The recent decision of the French Supreme Court [Cass. Soc.
Three years ago, in Stern v.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York last week ruled that the U.S. Bankruptcy Code does not permit a bankruptcy trustee to recover foreign transfers. Specifically, Judge Rakoff refused to allow Irving Picard, the trustee of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (“BLMIS”), to recoup monies initially transferred from BLMIS to non-U.S.
One of the more effective risk-mitigation legal tools used by senior real estate lenders is the single purpose entity borrower. Among other things, having a single purpose, bankruptcy remote borrower makes avoiding the risks of bankruptcy easier. Even in bankruptcy, if the borrower is truly single purpose, and it keeps the universe of creditors small, the senior secured lender will have an easier time defeating any plan of reorganization proposed by the borrower because it will control all of the legitimate classes of creditors by virtue of th
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, in Executive Benefits Insurance Agency v. Arkinson, limited somewhat the ramifications of its landmark opinion two years ago in Stern v.
A recent ruling in the Chapter 11 case of Free Lance-Star Publishing limited the credit bidding rights of a secured creditor. The ruling has called into question the ability of the holder of secured debt to utilize such debt to acquire companies on a going concern basis in bankruptcy cases, particularly in instances where the debt was acquired at a discount for such expr
A few months ago, a ruling in the Chapter 11 case of Fisker Automotive narrowed a secured creditor’s right to credit bid its debt in connection with a sale of the debtor’s assets. The decision surprised many observers and resurrected uncertainty about a debtor’s ability to limit a secured lender’s credit bidding rights (a dispute that appeared to have been firmly r