A series of decisions over the past year — on issues such as make-whole premiums, intercreditor agreements, backstops for rights offerings and nonconsensual third-party releases — will likely have a significant impact in 2020 on parties involved in bankruptcy proceedings.

Fifth Circuit Reverses Course on the Enforceability of Make-Whole Premiums in Chapter 11

The number of corporate Chapter 11 filings in the United States remained relatively low in 2019. An estimated 6,000 business bankruptcies were filed (based on the data available at the time of writing), which, if it holds up as the data is finalized, is essentially flat from 2018 and down 56% from the peak reached in 2009, following the Great Recession. The chart immediately below depicts corporate Chapter 11 filing volume over time.

In re Markus, 607 B.R. 379 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2019) [click for opinion]  

As we had anticipated in our prior client alerts,¹ the “customer” safe harbor defense to constructive fraudulent conveyance claims challenging securities transactions — which was flagged by the U.S.

To date, EU-wide insolvency legislation has focused on resolving conflicts of laws issues between Member States. Now that the Preventive Restructuring Framework Directive (the "Directive")¹ has successfully navigated its way through the Council and European Parliament (albeit with some significant amendments to the original text), all of that is set to change.

The global economy is growing at about 3% a year. This is roughly equal to the average growth rate for the last 50 years. However, growth predictions are ticking slightly downwards, mainly due to concerns around trade. And there are still high levels of government and corporate debt arising from the financial crisis and subsequent period of low interest rates. Nowhere is this better illustrated than China, which is forecast to overtake the US as the world's largest economy as early as this year, on some measures.

Yeni Gelişme  

Türkiye Bankalar Birliği, hazırladığı Finansal Yeniden Yapılandırma Çerçeve Anlaşması'nı ("Önceki Çerçeve Anlaşma") büyük ölçekli ("Büyük Ölçekli Çerçeve Anlaşma") ve küçük ölçekli ("Küçük Ölçekli Çerçeve Anlaşma") borçlular için iki farklı çerçeve sözleşme olacak şekilde bölmek üzere değişiklik yaptı.

Değişiklik ne getiriyor?

In recent years, it has become common practice in large chapter 11 cases for debtors to include language in their proposed chapter 11 plan which purports to release certain nondebtors from the claims of third parties. Although some third parties may consent to the release—such as by voting in favor of the plan or otherwise electing to do so during the plan solicitation process—circumstances frequently arise in which the debtors seek approval from the bankruptcy court to release nondebtors from third parties’ claims without the consent of the third parties.

On November 1, 2019, reforms to Canada’s Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) and the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) that were announced in Canada’s federal 2019 budget will come into force. Key changes to the insolvency regime include:

The Court of Appeal (CA) recently dismissed an appeal to set aside a statutory demand arising out of the failure to pay margin calls in But Ka Chon v. Interactive Brokers LLC (02/08/2019, CACV 611/2018) [2019] HKCA 873, despite the presence of a mandatory arbitration clause. Obiter comments of the CA put into question the recent case law in Re Southwest Pacific Bauxite (HK) Ltd [2018] 2 HKLRD 449 (the “Lasmos case“) that a petition should “generally be dismissed” in the face of a mandatory arbitration clause.  

Some key points