The United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (the “Court”) recently upheld a $23.7 million make-whole payment (the “Make-Whole Payment”) in In re School Specialty (Case No. 13-10125), denying the assertion by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (the “Committee”) that the fee is unenforceable under the United States Bankruptcy Code and applicable state law.

Secured lenders often resort to non-judicial foreclosure sales of personal property upon a borrower’s default. Article 9, Part 6 of the Uniform Commercial Code requires that every aspect of such a sale must be commercially reasonable. However, the courts have historically provided little guidance as to what exactly constitutes a commercially reasonable sale. Fortunately, the Delaware Chancery Court recently issued a decision, entitled Edgewater Growth Capital Partners, L.P. v. H.I.G. Capital, Inc., C.A. No. 3601-CS (Del.Ch. Apr.

Six month extensions to convening periods should not be seen as a fait accompli, particularly if the administrator's application is opposed.

There is a commonly held belief that courts will readily grant an administrator's application for an extension to the convening period. This might have been true once, but it is fast turning into an urban myth, judging by two recent decisions in the Federal Court.

The recent decision of Modcol Pty Ltd v National Buildplan Group Pty Ltd ^[1] addressed whether leave should be granted to a subcontractor to allow it to commence proceedings against a contractor in administration in respect of the subcontractor's rights under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (the SOP Act).

On April 30, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the bankruptcy court has authority to recharacterize as equity, rather than debt, advances of funds made purportedly as a loan to the recipient prior to its bankruptcy. In re Fitness Holdings International, Inc., --- F.3d ----, 2013 WL 1800000 (9th Cir. 2013).

Conventional wisdom says that it is nearly impossible to obtain a discharge of student loan debt in bankruptcy. Indeed, Section 523(a)(8) expressly excepts student loans from discharge, unless the exception of such indebtedness from discharge would impose an undue hardship upon the debtor.

The NSW Government has accepted some of the key recommendations of the Recommendations of the Independent Inquiry in Construction Industry Insolvency in NSW, including the introduction of bonds. We know that the Government will:

In an unpublished decision in In re The Village at Lakeridge, LLC, BAP Nos. NV-12-1456 and NV-12-1474 (B.A.P. 9th Cir. Apr. 5, 2013), the United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit held that a vote on a plan of reorganization submitted by a non-insider claimant is not to be disregarded under Bankruptcy Code section 1129(a)(10) merely because the claimant purchased the claim from an insider. In other words, the transferee of a claim does not step into the shoes of the transferor vis à vis the transferor’s status as an insider.

In what the Financial Times has called “the sovereign debt restructuring case of the century,” Argentina has timely submitted its proposal as requested by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, with which it is willing to make payments on approximately $1.3 billion of unpaid debt obligations that stem from the country’s $95 billion debt default of December 2001.