A few reactions to today’s oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit regarding the validity of Puerto Rico’s Recovery Act:
“The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.”
Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird”
At the end of “The Candidate”, Robert Redford’s title character, having won, famously asks, “What do we do now?”
A similar question can be asked now that the federal district court in Puerto Rico has struck down the Puerto Rico Public Corporation Debt Enforcement and Recovery Act.
Effective March 23, 2015, the Ohio Revised Code will contain robust provisions for the court appointment of a receiver, which will expand the statutory grounds for such appointments and expressly authorize enumerated powers for receivers designed to facilitate the receiver’s ability to liquidate assets. In many respects the revised statute codifies a number of existing practices.
In the aftermath of recent municipal bankruptcies in which issuers proposed and/or implemented bankruptcy plans involving partial discharges of the issuer’s payment obligation on insured bonds, there has been increased focus on whether municipal bond interest paid by a bond insurer after the bankruptcy plan’s effective date continues to be tax-exempt.
The Bankruptcy Code generally permits intellectual property licensees to continue using licensed property despite a licensor’s bankruptcy filing. However, because the “intellectual property” definition in the Bankruptcy Code does not include “trademarks,” courts have varied on whether trademark licensees receive similar protection. A New Jersey bankruptcy court recently grappled with this issue, concluding that trademark licensees may retain their trademark rights.
It long has been the law that unpaid creditors of an insolvent debtor can complain if the debtor sells or otherwise transfers any of its assets for less than their fair value. Assume, for example, a company in financial distress sells one of its manufacturing plants to an unrelated purchaser for $15 million. If an unpaid creditor of the seller can demonstrate the fair value of the facility at the time of the sale was $20 million, the purchaser may be required to account to the seller, or its creditors, for the $5 million difference.
Pennsylvania’s legislature recently approved House Bill No. 1773, an overhaul to its Municipalities Financial Recovery Act, commonly known as “Act 47.” HB 1773 was signed into law by Governor Tom Corbett on October 31, 2014.
Directors of an insolvent corporation face a host of difficult questions. Should they wind up operations or file for bankruptcy to preserve assets for creditors, or chart a riskier course that could lead the company back to profitability and possibly create value for shareholders? If they choose the riskier course and it fails, will the directors be potentially liable to creditors? The opinion issued by Vice Chancellor Laster of the Delaware Court of Chancery earlier this month in Quadrant Structured Products Co., Ltd. v. Vertin, C.A. No. 6990-VCL, slip op., 2014 Del. Ch.
In a recent bench decision in In re MPM Silicones, LLC et al., Case No. 14-22503-RDD (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. August 26, 2014), the Bankruptcy Court considered bondholders’ right to recover make-whole premiums (premiums paid for early repayment of debt) upon the payment of accelerated debt following the borrower’s bankruptcy default. The Court ruled that the governing loan documents lacked specific language requiring a make-whole premium upon acceleration.