Following the announcement that Crystal Palace Football Club had gone into administration in January 2010, the club's administrator wanted to sell the club as a going concern. Shortly after he  signed a sale and purchase agreement with the newly formed Crystal Palace Football Consortium (CPFC) he discovered that the club had severe financial problems and decided to 'mothball' the club during the out of season period, in the hope of selling it in the future. However CPFC then decided to withdraw its offer for the club and on 28 May 2010 the four claimants were made redundant.

Shortly after the last ever Monarch Airlines flight landed at Manchester Airport in the early hours of Monday morning, the airline entered administration, prompting the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to launch its "biggest ever peacetime repatriation" to bring home the 110,000 Monarch customers stranded abroad.

The impact on those travellers should be minimal, but an estimated 750,000 customers' future flights and holidays have been cancelled. Where they stand primarily comes down to whether their booking is protected by the UK's Air Travel Organisers' Licence (ATOL) scheme.

Facts

This case related to the leasehold ownership of hotel rooms. The applicants were the leaseholders of the hotel rooms and the respondent companies the lessors.

A hotel property derives much of its value from its operator and brand. When a hotel owner is in distress with respect to its loan obligations, the operator also plays a critical role in the resolution of the workout process between the owner and the lender. The rights and obligations of the operator contained in its agreements with the owner and the lender affect any workout decision that the parties may make.

Since the inception of Tribal1 gaming, billions of dollars have been provided to Tribal casinos by investors and lenders. Clearly, these investments and loans were not considered to be a gamble. Tribal debtors borrow for many reasons; their debt is considered “sovereign” due to their unique legal standing.

These are tough times in the hotel business. The recession has squeezed room rates and net operating income. The credit crunch means new borrowing is available only at lower loan to value ratios near 50%, on already beaten down values. At the same time, many tens of billions of dollars of existing hotel loans are maturing or otherwise in default, leaving the owners with little ability to sell or refinance at for amounts sufficient to pay off existing debt.

Intercreditor agreements between first and second lien lenders are created all the time and are therefore not usually glitzy topics for client updates. But the recent intercreditor dispute between Donald Trump and corporate raider Carl Icahn over control of Trump's Atlantic City casinos had all the drama and glamour of the gambling dens and billionaires involved, including two competing but confirmable plans and senior and junior creditors vying for ownership of a gaming empire and its attendant upside.

On October 5, 2010, Judge Bruce Black of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois (the “Bankruptcy Court”) issued a ruling in the River Road Hotel Partner LLC, et. al. (the “Debtors”) bankruptcy cases denying the Debtors’ bid procedures motion incident to plan confirmation. The bid procedures motion, among other things, sought the denial of secured creditor’s right to credit bid.

For many hotel owners, it is an all-too-familiar story: occupancy is down, and even though operating expenses have been cut to the bone, there is just not enough money to go around. It seems there is always another bill: franchise fees, payroll, real property taxes, debt service—the list goes on. The unfortunate result is that either because of a failure to make a payment or a breach of some other covenant, the owner finds itself looking at a default notice from its lender. When dealing with a loan default, there are four things the hotel owner needs to understand.

In re River Road Hotel Partners, LLC, et al., Case No. 09-B-30029 (Bankr. N.D. Ill. 2010)

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