Bellflower Funding, LLC and Wall 123, LLC, two affiliates of the Woodbridge Group of Companies, LLC, have filed petitions for relief under Chapter 11 in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (Case Nos. 18-10507 & 18-10508).

Orexigen Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of obesity based in La Jolla, CA, has filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (Case No. 18-10518). According to the Petition, as of November 30, 2017, Orexigen had $265.1 million in assets and $226.4 million in liabilities.

"In God we trust. All others must bring data.” — W. Edwards Deming

With data being the new “coin of the realm,” those who control and exploit data have a winning advantage over competitors. This piece focuses on control of data in the unique situation of a cloud hosting provider’s bankruptcy.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court in Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc., 2018 WL 1054879 (Feb. 27, 2018) has made it easier for bankruptcy trustees to claw back money received as part of certain transactions, while emphasizing that bankruptcy law still protects the financial institutions that facilitate those transactions. The transfers at issue in Merit Management were not a debtor’s ordinary loan payments to a lender.

The Walking Company Holdings, a Santa Barbara, CA-based designer, manufacturer and retailer of comfort footwear and casual apparel, has, along with its wholly owned subsidiaries The Walking Company, Big Dog USA, Inc. and FootSmart, Inc., filed

Preference Claims: Elements: A preference is a transfer of property of a bankruptcy debtor that (1) was to or for the benefit of a creditor; (2) was on account of an antecedent debt; (3) was made while the debtor was insolvent; (4) was made within 90 days of the filing of the bankruptcy petition; and (5) allowed the creditor to receive more than the creditor would receive if the payment had not been made but the creditor receives what it would receive in a liquidation of the debtor.

HCR ManorCare, Inc., a national provider of short-term, post-hospital services and long-term care based in Toledo, Ohio, has filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (Case No. 18-10467). HCR’s Petition estimates both its assets and liabilities to be between $1–$10 billion.

Jet Midwest Group, LLC, has filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (Case No. 18-10395). The petition estimates the debtor’s assets and its liabilities to be between $10–$50 million. A claims and noticing agent has not yet been proposed.

Our post last year concerning “[t]he long-running litigation spawned by the leveraged buyout of Tribune Company . . . and the subsequent bankruptcy case”[1] described a case--FTI v. Merit[2]--that was then pending in the Supreme Court.

By most measures the economy is strong. Unemployment is low. The stock market is roaring. Gross domestic product is rising. Under these circumstances, bankruptcy is on few people’s minds.

Corporate bankruptcy tends to be cyclical, and bankruptcy filings trend up and down along with the direction of the macro economy. The last big surge in corporate bankruptcy filings came in the wake of last decade’s financial crisis (and closer to home here in Michigan, the automotive crisis) and “Great Recession.”