An Eleventh Circuit panel recently vacated two district court orders after sending the parties to mediation, and after the parties’ conditioned settlement on vacatur of the orders. In Hartford Casualty Insurance Company v. Crum & Forster Specialty Insurance Company, after being ordered to mediation a second time by the appellate panel, the parties reached a settlement contingent on the district court’s vacating its orders on summary judgment and attorney’s fees.
Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. §§ 1501 et seq., provides the legal framework by which U.S. bankruptcy courts recognize foreign insolvency proceedings of companies that have assets and operations in more than one country. Congress added Chapter 15 to the Bankruptcy Code with the enactment of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. Like any new law, the application and limits of Chapter 15 are developing through jurisprudence.
This appeal is from an order by a district court in California, affirming a bankruptcy court’s denial of a motion to compel arbitration in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee’s adversary proceeding, in which the trustee sought avoidance of fraudulent transfers.
Recent piece-meal amendments to the Spanish Insolvency Act 2003 seem to have cumulated into a restructuring solution that is starting to be considered predictable, quick and fair, especially when compared to the pre-amendment system. With its new restructuring approach, which shares many of the same characteristics as an English Scheme of Arrangement, Spanish companies have finally been given much-needed space and time to develop an appropriate restructuring strategy.
While the CIS nations have recently provided a multitude of sizeable restructuring cases, the region’s dominant force, Russia, has stood up reasonably well to lengthy economic decline, economic sanctions and the collapse of oil and gas prices. There are now signs however, that its complex troubles are pushing certain companies towards a restructuring or insolvency position.
In light of the UK’s cram down and director-friendly processes, in particular its scheme of arrangement model, major European economies such as France, Germany and Italy have worked hard to develop regimes that give greater emphasis to pre-insolvency alternatives. These new regimes create cram down mechanisms and encourage debtor-in-possession (DIP) financings, ultimately aiming to make restructuring plans more accessible, more efficient, and crucially more reliable; essentially more in tune with the Anglo-American approach to insolvency and restructuring.
Much like the English Scheme of Arrangement which has become a popular debt restructuring solution for international debtors, the English High Court is an attractive forum for insolvency litigation thanks to the potent combination of wide-ranging powers available to Insolvency Practitioners (IPs) under the Insolvency Act 1986, and the increasing availability of litigation funding arrangements in the London market.
Liability management exercises (“LMEs”) are increasing in the bond and capital market and are often used in relatively benign situations. They are certainly not always a precursor to a full-scale restructuring or insolvency.
Prior to the recent collapse in oil values, prices existed at over $100 a barrel for over three years. It made the economics of oil exploration, production and sale comparatively straightforward, but embedded costs into the industry.