In 2011, the Supreme Court decided Stern v. Marshall, 564 U.S. ___, 131 S. Ct. 2594 (2011), which gave voice to the Court’s grave concerns about the constitutional limits of bankruptcy court jurisdiction and raised several questions that have confounded courts and lawyers for three years. Last week, the Supreme Court issued its first follow-up ruling, answering some of those questions and clarifying how bankruptcy courts are to handle so-called Stern claims. Despite that guidance, the opinion leaves several important questions unanswered.

As expected (and predicted), the bankruptcy judge in Dallas, Texas granted Mt. Gox’s request for an order of “recognition” that the debtor’s Tokyo insolvency action was a “foreign main proceeding.” She will also allow Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy trustee, Nobuaki Kobayahsi, to act as the “foreign representative” of the debtor in connection with whatever relief it might seek in the Chapter 15 case.

La Sentencia del Tribunal General del TJUE de 8 de abril de 2014 (asunto T-319/11), resuelve el re- curso de anulación parcial interpuesto por ABN Amro Group NV contra la Decisión 2011/823/UE, de la Comisión, que le impuso la prohibición de adquirir empresas de cualquier sector como una de las condiciones para considerar compatible con el mercado interior la ayuda pública que recibió del Estado holandés. La entidad ABN Amro había recibido ayuda pública para su recapitalización de entre 4.200 y 5.450 millones de euros, así como una ayuda de liquidez de 7.170 millones de euros.

On June 18, 2014, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas will consider whether to grant recognition to the insolvency case pending in Tokyo. Based on the pleadings filed last week, it is a virtual certainty that the court will enter an order granting recognition.

The Portuguese Official Journal (Diário da República) published last 30 May Act no. 32/2014, approving the new pre-enforcement out-of-court procedure.

The above referred procedure will come into force on 1st September 2014 and will be available to creditors with enforceable instruments that may be relied on in summary enforcement proceedings (judgments, orders for payment and extrajudicial instruments regarding overdue pecuniary obligations).

On May 21, the bankruptcy trustee for Mt. Gox advised depositors that the bankruptcy case in Tokyo was proceeding.  The information contained in the email was limited in scope, guarded and of little use in understanding the trustee’s view of how the bankruptcy ultimately may resolve. 

According to its Explanatory Notes, RD Act (Order in Council) 4/2014, of 7 March, adopting  urgent measures on business debt refinancing and restructuring, aims to facilitate the financial  repair and recovery of companies facing an economic crisis. To this end, a set of rules varying in  scope and significance have been laid down, which I here discuss with regards to the treatment  reserved to loans granted under refinancing agreements - as provided by the Spanish Insolvency  Act (IA) - and their signatory creditors.

This paper sets out to make some considerations on the position of creditors holding real security (security in rem) within para-insolvency and insolvency refinancing procedures introduced or modified by Royal Decree Act (Order in Council) 4/2012 adopting urgent measures on business debt refinancing and restructuring. I will avoid the new scope of the avoidance of preinsolvency transactions under arts. 71 bis and 72 of the Spanish Insolvency Act (IA), which will be the subject of a subsequent paper. Nor will the calculation of the “value of (real) security” be discussed here.

On April 28, in the wake of Mt. Gox’s Japanese rehabilitation proceeding having been converted to a liquidation proceeding, a proposal for selling and restarting the Mt. Gox exchange was submitted in the pending class action litigation in Illinois. The proposal was accepted by plaintiffs in the class action litigation before a class had even been certified.

In homologated refinancing agreements