On March 17, 2021, the National Congress rejected 12 of the 14 vetoes by President Jair Bolsonaro (veto nº 57/2020) on Law nº 14,112/2020, which amended the Brazilian Bankruptcy Code (Law nº 11,101/2005 - “LREF”).
Following review and proposal by the UK Government to develop stricter scrutiny of pre-pack administration sales to connected parties, the Government laid the draft Regulations in Parliament on 24 February 2021. These are due to come into force on 30 April 2021. Our previous article summarising the Government’s proposal can be found here.
In its recent decision in Matter of First River Energy, LLC,1 the Fifth Circuit resolved a priority dispute between lienholders regarding their competing claims to cash held by the debtor, First River Energ
With each extension, the scope of the suspension of the obligation to file for insolvency which was first introduced in March 2020 became more and more limited.
Introduction
In January 2021, Law 14.112/20 introduced a new section into the Brazilian Bankruptcy Law (the "BBL") regulating financing for companies which are the subject of a court-supervised reorganisation.
In a recent opinion issued in the Cinemex theater bankruptcy cases, In re Cinemex USA Real Estate Holdings, Inc., Case No. 20-14695-BKC-LMI, 2021 WL 564486 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. Jan. 27, 2021), Judge Laurel M. Isicoff of the U.S.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, on February 25, 2021, a New York bankruptcy court dismissed the involuntary bankruptcy petition brought earlier in the month by three student loan borrowers against Navient Solutions (see our prior post on the borrowers’ petition here). Navient is the student loan servicing arm of Navient Corporation, one of the world’s largest student loan-originators.
In what is the third, sanctioned restructuring plan since the introduction of Part 26A Companies Act 2006 in June 2020, the previously untested “cross-class cram-down” mechanism has now been applied for the first time. Cross-class cram-down being the ability to impose a restructuring plan on dissenting stakeholders whether or not those dissenting creditors form part of the same class as the approving creditors.
Just after 5:00 p.m. Central Time on February 23, 2021, Belk, Inc. and its affiliates filed chapter 11 petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas, along with a proposed “prepackaged” plan of reorganization. Before midnight, the US Trustee objected to Belk’s plan, and, by 8:00 a.m. the next day, the parties were in court to decide plan confirmation. Two hours later, Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur confirmed the plan, and it became effective that afternoon, just 20 hours after the Chapter 11 cases were filed.