Claims trading has become increasingly commonplace in today’s bankruptcy cases, typically with little need for policing by the courts.

In December 2017, Congress passed and President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Job Act of 2017 (TCJA). Effective as of Jan. 1, 2018, the TCJA is a wide-ranging change to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (the Tax Code) affecting individual, corporate, and international taxation.

Lost amongst the many commentaries are two changes that have a negative impact on business debtors under the Bankruptcy Code: (1) reduction of the corporate tax rates and (2) elimination of the ability to carry back net operating losses.

What does it take to represent a private equity client entangled in a complex restructuring involving an important investment in a portfolio company?

Ask David Meyer, the Vinson & Elkins New York-based restructuring partner who led the V&E team representing Riverstone Holdings in the restructuring of Gulf of Mexico oil producer Fieldwood Energy.

In many ways, the case serves as a template for navigating amid a set of highly challenging circumstances.

On February 27, 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in the Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc. case, holding that funds that are merely transferred through a financial institution are not afforded the Bankruptcy Code “safe harbor” protections of 11 U.S.C. § 546(e), which precludes the avoidance or “clawback” of certain transfers; rather, whether the safe harbor applies in a given case will depend on the whether the parties to the overarching transfer are listed as protected parties in the statute.

Historically, German insolvencies have been perceived as extremely unattractive, particularly because they were dominated by court-appointed bankruptcy administrators, with limited to no influence for creditors. This has, however, significantly changed over the last years. In that respect, it was the clearly expressed intention of the German legislature to make insolvencies more attractive for all parties involved. However, the available powerful features are often still unknown and hence not used, in particular by foreign investors.

I sense a sea change in the recent Delaware decision in Intervention Energy Holdings, LLC, 2016 WL 3185576 (6/3/16), refusing to enforce a bankruptcy proofing provision of a Delaware LLC’s operating agreement. Until recently, the trend had been to accept the fundamental principles of bankruptcy remoteness, although courts sometimes found ways to avoid honoring anti-bankruptcy devices in specific cases.

Greenberg Traurig, LLP | gtlaw.com 1 Sixth Annual American College of Bankruptcy Seventh Circuit Education Committee Seminar Session: Exploring the Outer Limits of the Avoiding Powers September 11, 2015 IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law 565 West Adams Street Chicago, IL Moderator: Nancy A.

This week’s unanimous Supreme Court decision barring the strip off of wholly unsecured junior liens in chapter 7 cases is one of the stranger recent opinions of the Court.  See Bank of America, N.A. v. Caulkett, No. 13-1421, ___ U.S. ___ (June 1, 2015).  While the result is not particularly surprising, what is unusual is that the Court goes out of its way to question its two decades old decision inDewsnup and may even be hinting that it is ready to overrule that decision.  See Dewsnup v. Timm,502 U.S. 410 (1992).

A collective sigh of relief was the main effect of this week’s much-awaited Supreme Court decision on bankruptcy jurisdiction in Wellness International Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, No. 13-935, ___ U.S.___ (May 26, 2015, Sotomayor, J.). While a number of minor issues remain, the majority’s ruling that bankruptcy judges can issue judgments and final orders with the parties’ consent means that the current bankruptcy system can continue to function normally.

In a little-noticed November opinion, the Seventh Circuit greatly expanded the ability of a bankruptcy trustee to avoid a security interest for documentation errors under section 544(a)(1) of the Bankruptcy Code.  See State Bank of Toulon v. Covey (In re Duckworth), 776 F.3d 453 (7th Cir. 2014).