A recent decision by the Delaware bankruptcy court highlights the issues which must be considered by private equity firms, investment funds and other entities who play an active role in the management of their financially distressed portfolio companies.
Lending to a foreign company? If you choose English law to govern your facility documents and provide for the English court to have exclusive jurisdiction, an English scheme may be a viable means of restructuring the debt later, if the need arises.
The Russian insolvency legislation mainly consists of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (the Civil Code) and the Federal Law No. 127-FZ on insolvency (bankruptcy) dated 26 October 2002 (the Insolvency Law), the principal legislation on insolvency in the Russian Federation.
TPR settled its dispute with Michael Van de Wiele (VdW) in relation to its UK pension scheme and issued a Contribution Notice (CN) for £60,000. Although this is significantly less than the £21 million originally sought and the £5.08 million decided by the Determinations Panel, TPR says it is “business as usual” for the use of its statutory anti-avoidance powers. A settlement at this level might be viewed as a defeat for TPR and an indication that CNs are not a potent weapon to deal with the avoidance of employer debts. That view would be seriously misguided.
In Re EarthFirst Canada Inc., Justice Romaine had to consider establishing a “hardship fund” that would be used to allow EarthFirst Canada Inc. (“EarthFirst”) to pay pre-filing obligations owing to certain suppliers and contractors operating in a remote community where EarthFirst is developing a wind farm project.
Lending to a foreign company? If you choose English law to govern your facility documents and provide for the English court to have exclusive jurisdiction, an English scheme may be a viable means of restructuring the debt later, if the need arises.
Section 147 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (“BIA”) provides that the Superintendent’s Levy is applied to defray the supervisory expenses of the Superintendent, will be charged on dividend payments made by the trustee.
When a company winds up, begins restructuring proceedings or goes bankrupt, a debtor or creditor may be able to cancel out the amount payable to the other party by using the remedy of “set‐off”. Set‐off involves the cancelling of crossliabilities between two parties who owe each other money. It is a valuable tool that can increase a creditor’s percentage of recovery and decrease the debt burden of a debtor.
Types of Set‐off: Contractual, Legal or Equitable
Recent declines in the trading prices of many companies' debt securities has created opportunities for those companies to reacquire a portion or all of that debt at substantial discounts through open market repurchases, privately negotiated transactions and tender offers. In some cases, the opportunities for discounted repurchases come to companies directly from investors seeking to sell the debt back in order to meet their own cash needs or otherwise obtain liquidity for thinly-traded securities.
Where lenders rely on floating charge security to make recoveries from companies in administration, some recent cases have massively increased the potential for administration expenses to swallow up those recoveries. The more well-known cases could just be the start. So, what are the potential risks? What can lenders do in the face of the law as it currently stands? What is going to happen next?
The Nortel decisions