In an opinion that will have a significant impact on the viability of debt for debt exchanges and out of court restructurings, Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S.

Overturning the High Court and Court of Appeal decisions in Bloom and Others v The Pensions Regulator and Others, the Supreme Court has ruled that financial support directions (FSD)and contribution notices (CN) issued by The Pensions Regulator in insolvencies create “provable debts” which should be given unsecured, non-preferential, creditor ranking.

The travails of Jefferson County, Alabama are well known.

The U.S. Supreme Court will rule this term in RadLAX Gateway Hotel Inc. v. Amalgamated Bank on whether the Bankruptcy Code permits a debtor in a chapter 11 case to sell encumbered assets without providing the secured lender an opportunity to credit bid its debt. Determination of this question will require the Court essentially to choose between two opposing approaches to statutory interpretation, and decide whether the so-called “plain meaning” of a highly formalistic reading of the Bankruptcy Code should trump decades of established commercial practice.   

Last week’s Chapter 11 filing by NewPage Corporation, a company with assets and liabilities in the billions of dollars, stands as a relative rarity in the current restructuring environment.

Fred Wilpon, Saul Katz, and their families and affiliated enterprises (the “Wilpon/Katz Group”) last week formally requested the dismissal of the adversary proceeding commenced by Irving Picard, the trustee of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (“BLMIS”). In a two hour hearing before U.S.

Critics of last year’s decision on credit bidding by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in the Philadelphia Newspapers chapter 11 case welcomed the Seventh Circuit’s recent unanimous opinion in River Road Hotel Partners LLC.

STAMAT v. NEARY (March 24, 2011)

WHITELY v. MORAVEC (February 16, 2011)

BUSSON-SOKOLIK v. MILWAUKEE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING (February 10, 2011)