On March 15, 2022, the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico announced that the Plan of Adjustment for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico became effecfive, more than four years aher Puerto Rico commenced restructuring proceedings under Title III of the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act (“PROMESA”). PROMESA is a bespoke piece of federal legislafion enacted in 2016 to address Puerto Rico’s debt crisis, and incorporates most of chapter 9 of the Bankruptcy Code.
Considerations of “environmental, social and governance” (or ESG) criteria with respect to a company’s management and operations continue to take on greater importance in lenders’ and investors’ credit and investment decisions. How a borrower or a target company measures up to these ever-developing ESG standards will impact its cost of capital and value to potential investors and acquirors.
Foreign companies seeking to protect their overseas assets from their creditors have often turned to the United States for immediate relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. Establishing jurisdiction in the US for purposes of a bankruptcy filing has proved easy – the establishment of a nominal professional fees retainer with a local law firm on the eve of a bankruptcy filing will suffice.
Earlier this year, Mexican airline, Grupo Aeromexico, S.A.B. de C.V. (together with its affiliates, the “Debtors”) announced that their creditor body had overwhelmingly voted to approve their proposed Chapter 11 restructuring plan (the “Plan”) save for one class of unsecured creditor claims that voted to reject the Plan. Those claims were held by Invictus Global Management, LLC (“Invictus”), a distressed investment fund that recently purchased the claims subject to a “plan support provision” which purportedly compelled the claimholder to support the Debtors’ Plan.
The merchant cash advance (“MCA”) industry recently provided two different bankruptcy courts with an opportunity to consider the characterization of MCA funding transactions as either “true sales” of receivables or “disguised loans”.
The practice of granting third party releases in bankruptcy was recently dealt another blow by the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In Patterson et. al. v. Mahwah Bergen Retail Group, Inc., Civil No. 3:21cv167 (DJN), the District Court found that the lower bankruptcy court lacked the constitutional authority to both rule on certain of the claims covered by the third-party releases at issue and, it follows, to confirm the debtors’ plan of reorganization.
On December 22, 2021, Judge Mary Walrath of the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware held in In re The Hertz Corp. that redemption premiums may potentially qualify as unmatured interest, and that, to the extent that such redemption premiums are unmatured interest on unsecured debt, then creditors would only be entitled to receive the federal judgment rate, not the contractual rate of interest.
The Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware recently expressed its view regarding the reach of the “solvent debtor exception” in In re The Hertz Corp., et al. The solvent debtor exception is an equitable doctrine which supports the proposition that creditors are entitled to the full suite of their contractual rights if the debtor in bankruptcy is solvent.
Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code, adopted in all fifty states plus the District of Columbia with relatively few variations, sets out, among other things, the rules to be followed when obtaining a security interest in personal property collateral to secure a loan. The basic premise of Article 9 is that if the lender follows the rules, it should be protected against third parties, including other creditors or a bankruptcy trustee, who would seek to challenge the lender’s security interest or the priority of the security interest.
In its much-discussed decision, City of Chicago v. Fulton, 141 S. Ct. 585 (2020), the Supreme Court ruled that the City of Chicago (“City”) was not in violation of Section 362(a)(3) of the Bankruptcy Code for failing to release an impounded car to a debtor in bankruptcy.