On February 25, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a decision holding that a trustee is not barred by either the presumption against extraterritoriality or by international comity principles from recovering property from a foreign subsequent transferee that received the property from a foreign initial transferee.

The Bottom Line

The Bottom Line

On January 17, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a decision holding that “impairment” under a plan of reorganization does not arise even if a creditor is paid less than it would be entitled to under its contract, so long as the reduced recovery is due to the plan’s incorporation of the Bankruptcy Code’s disallowance provisions.

Intercreditor agreements between secured creditors are intended to limit the potential for litigation and result in predictable commercial outcomes with respect to recoveries from collateral in enforcement actions and bankruptcies. Despite the extensive drafting efforts of sophisticated counsel to eliminate ambiguities in these agreements, the interpretation of intercreditor agreements has been the subject of substantial bankruptcy litigation.

The Bottom Line

On Jan. 19, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated a bankruptcy court decision awarding Ultra Petroleum Corp. noteholders $201 million in make-whole payments and $186 million in post-petition interest. Under the note agreement, upon a bankruptcy filing, the issuer is obligated for a make-whole amount equal to the discounted value of the remaining scheduled payments (including principal and interest that would be due after prepayment) less the principal amount of the notes.

The Bottom Line

The Bottom Line

In one of the first applications of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the scope of section 546(e) in Merit Management, Delaware Bankruptcy Court Judge Carey found that section 546(e)’s safe harbor did not apply to fraudulent transfers between two parties that were not financial institutions, even if the transaction passed through financial intermediaries.

What Happened

The Bottom Line

In In re ENNIA Caribe Holding N.V., 18-12908 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Dec. 20, 2018), a bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York recognized a foreign insurance company’s rehabilitation proceeding in Curaçao as a “foreign main proceeding,” pursuant to Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, over objections from the insurance company’s nondebtor parent company. In doing so, the court examined, among other things, what is required for a “collective proceeding” in a foreign insolvency.

What Happened