The decision of the Supreme Court of 20 April 2017, No. 9983 confirms that the bank can be held jointly liable with the directors towards the company, on different grounds from those making the bank accountable to individual creditors

“… [A]ny sale of [a foreign] debtor[’s] property [in the U.S.] outside of the ordinary course of business can be approved by the bankruptcy court only after notice, hearing, and a finding of good business reasons to permit the sale,” held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on May 22, 2017. In re Fairfield Sentry Ltd. (“Sentry II”), 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 8860, at *11 (2d Cir. May 22, 2017).

The Bankruptcy Code (“Code”) “requires the use of replacement value rather than a hypothetical [foreclosure] value … that the reorganization is designed to avoid,” held a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on May 26, 2017.

“[T]he debtor … did not retain sufficient rights in the assigned rents under Michigan law for those rents to be included in the bankruptcy estate,” held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on May 2, 2017. In re Town Center Flats LLC, 201 U.S. App. LEXIS 7733, *2 (6th Cir. May 2, 2017). Relying on Michigan law and the language of the relevant documents, the court reversed the bankruptcy court’s holding that gave the Chapter 11 debtor access to the assigned rents as operating funds during its reorganization.

Relevance

Claims held by employees of a Chapter 11 debtor based on “restricted stock units (‘RSUs’) … must be subordinated [under Bankruptcy Code § 510(b)] to the claims of general creditors because … (i) RSUs are securities, (ii) the claimants acquired them in a purchase, and (iii) the claims for damages arise from those purchases or the asserted rescissions thereof,” held the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on May 4, 2017. In re Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 7920, *6 (2d Cir. May 4, 2017).

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, after a lengthy trial, dismissed on April 21, 2017 a litigation trustee’s multibillion-dollar bankruptcy-related claims arising out of a December 2007 merger, finding that:

According to decision no. 17441, of 31 August 2016, of the First Division of the Supreme Civil Court, the liability of directors without management power cannot originate from a general failure to supervise – that would be identified in the facts as a strict liability – but must be attributed to the breach of the duty to act in an informed way, on the basis of both information to be released by executive directors and information that non-executive directors can gather on their own initiative.

The Court of Florence (November 2, 2016) confirmed that the debtor can retain part of his assets, with a view to support the company’s recovery and in derogation to principles of liability of the debtor.

The case

A company applied for concordato preventivo, based on a plan providing for, on one side, the sale of those assets not functional to the business and, on the other side, the company to continue to trade retaining those other assets which were needed for the activities to be carried on.

A ruling of the Court of Padua of 31 December 2016 is compared with few other known Court decisions regarding the extension of the effects of a debt restructuring agreement to dissenting financial creditors

The case

Two companies having an indebtedness mainly towards banks and leasing companies, jointly submitted to the Court a request for confirmation of a debt restructuring agreement providing for a two-year moratorium of payment of principal and a restructuring of interests.

The Court of Cassation (decision No. 4915 of 27 February 2017) lowered the threshold allowing the Bankruptcy Court to review the feasibility of the concordato preventivo proposal.

The case