The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in In re Philadelphia Newspapers LLC,1 has ruled that secured creditors do not have a right, as a matter of law, to credit bid their claims when their collateral is sold under a plan of reorganization. The Third Circuit held that secured creditors may be barred from credit bidding where a debtor's reorganization plan provides secured creditors with the "indubitable equivalent" of their secured interest in the assets. The court's ruling follows a similar ruling last year by the U.S.

On February 23, 2009, Pennsylvania became the second state to recognize an "ordinary course of business" exception to preference actions brought under a state insolvency statute where the defense is not expressly provided for in the statute. In Joel S. Ario, Insurance Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in His Official Capacity as Liquidator of Reliance Insurance Company, Appellant v. H.J. Heinz Company, H.J. Heinz Company, L.P., H.J. Heinz Finance Company, and Portion Pac, Inc., et al., Appellees, No. 21 MAP 2006 (Pa. Feb.

The Supreme Court of Canada decision in Century Services Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), which arose from the restructuring proceedings of Ted LeRoy Trucking Ltd. and was released on December 6, 2010, is a landmark decision in Canadian insolvency law.

2017 saw a number of interesting and important developments in Canadian insolvency and restructuring matters. Some of the highlights (which, in certain instances, will continue as issues in 2018 and beyond) are set forth below:

1) Trends: Fewer CCAA Filings and Retail Insolvencies in the News

In a previous post we discussed how the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta recently authorized a sale transaction after being satisfied with the appropriateness of a sales process that was undertaken prior to the issuance of the receivership order.

The Supreme Court of Cassation (19 October 2017, No. 24682) discerns the respective scope of application of the criteria for the liquidation of compensation to the lawyer in case there was no specific agreement between the parties

The case

With the decision No. 1649 of 19 September 2017 the Court of Appeals of Catania followed the interpretation according to which a spin-off is not subject to the avoiding powers of a bankruptcy receiver

The case

The Court of Prato (30 April 2017) confirms that the concordato filing stays (and does not instead terminate) pending enforcement actions by individual creditors and clarifies that the term for the creditor to restart the proceeding runs from the decision of the Court concluding the concordato

 1. Introduction

The new Regulation follows on the path of Regulation No. 1346/2000, representing the last step of a process which has been started years ago. European Union authorities resorted also to other means in this direction: aside to the Regulation, a Recommendation has been issued in 2014, inviting Member States to adopt internal procedures more favourable to restructuring (rather than liquidating) distressed businesses.

A ruling of the Court of Padua of 31 December 2016 is compared with few other known Court decisions regarding the extension of the effects of a debt restructuring agreement to dissenting financial creditors

The case

Two companies having an indebtedness mainly towards banks and leasing companies, jointly submitted to the Court a request for confirmation of a debt restructuring agreement providing for a two-year moratorium of payment of principal and a restructuring of interests.