The New York State Attorney General settled a lawsuit against Ernst & Young related to its involvement in the financial statement preparation of Lehman Brothers Holding, Inc. The NY AG had alleged that the auditing firm had countenanced Lehman’s inclusion of certain repurchase transactions as sales and not as financings, which permitted the firm to remove “tens of billions of dollars” of securities from its balance sheet. According to the NY AG, the repo transactions—known as “Repo 105”—“served no legitimate purpose.

The trustee for the liquidation of MF Global Inc. is seeking permission from the bankruptcy judge overseeing the firm’s dissolution to make a distribution of US $461 million to unsecured general creditors. If approved, this distribution would result in total distributions to unsecured general creditors of 72 percent of their approved claims. To date, the trustee has distributed 100 percent of approved claims of MF Global’s customers (totaling US $6.7 billion), and 100 percent of approved secured, priority and administrative claims.

On January 14, 2015, Target Corporation ("Target US") announced the exit of substantially all of its Canadian operations less than two years after opening its first Canadian stores in a strategic push to operate at least one store in every province of Canada. The following day, on January 15, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) in Toronto (the "Court") granted Target Canada Co.

Introduction

On December 16, 2014, President Obama signed into law the $1.1 trillion Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2015 (Appropriations Act), which includes some significant changes to the rules governing multiemployer pension plans, as well as a few changes affecting single employer pension plans.

With several billions of dollars ultimately at stake, the Second Circuit has affirmed that Section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code, a safe-harbor protecting certain securities-related payments from bankruptcy “claw backs,” barred Irving Picard, Trustee of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC (“BLMIS”), from asserting all but a limited category of avoidance and recovery claims. In re Bernard L. Madoff Inv. Sec.

Six trade associations representing non-dealer swap market participants sent a letter to the Financial Stability Board on November 4, urging the FSB to reconsider its initiative to promote contractual waivers of default rights under industry-standard derivative master agreements. The letter, signed by the Managed Funds Association, the Alternative Investment Management Association Limited, the American Council of Life Insurers, the Association of Institutional Investors, the Commodity Customer Coalition and the Commodity Markets Council, responds to comments made by the FSB in the cons

The United States District Court in Delaware recently issued a welcome decision for private equity firms whose portfolio companies run afoul of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (the “WARN Act”).  In In re Jevic Holding Corp. (PDF), the Court affirmed a bankruptcy court decision holding that Sun Capital Partners (“Sun”) was not liable for the WARN Act violations of Jevic Transportation Inc.

The US Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California (the "Court") recently upheld the validity of a commercial lease provision by which a debtor/tenant waived its rights to seek relief from forfeiture (i.e., termination) of the lease under California law. As a result, the debtor/tenant had no right in the bankruptcy case to assume the lease. In re Art and Architecture Books of the 21st Century, Case No. 2:13-bk-14135-RK (September 18, 2014).

Fourteen former MF Global executives, including Jon Corzine, the former chairman and chief executive officer, are entitled to access most of a US $200 million directors and officers liability insurance policy purchased by MF Global Holdings prior to the firm filing for bankruptcy in October 2011, under the decision of a US bankruptcy court in NYC last week. The executives had previously made a motion to access the insurance.