The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a secured creditor cannot be denied its right to “credit bid”—i.e., to offset the amount of its debt against the purchase price of assets, rather than bidding in cash—in sales of collateral undertaken in connection with plans of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. In so ruling, the Court resolved a widely publicized split of authority among the Circuit Courts of Appeal, and rejected the Third Circuit’s ruling in the Philadelphia Newspapers case.¹

In what it described as “an easy decision,” the U.S. Supreme Court issued its eagerly anticipated decision in RadLAX Gateway Hotel, LLC et al. v. Amalgamated Bank¹ on May 29, 2012.

In re Vitro, S.A.B de C.V v. ACP Master, Ltd., et al., Case No. 11-33335-HDH-15 (N.D. Tex. 2011), is a decision by a bankruptcy court but contains discussion of the issue often arising in contentious international litigation:  attempts to enjoin proceedings in other countries in favor of proceedings in the U.S., or attempts to enjoin proceedings in the U.S.

Introduction

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently issued an important decision on the valuation of collateral of secured creditors and “lien-stripping” in Chapter 11 cases. In In re Heritage Highgate, Inc.,¹ the court held that in a Chapter 11 case, the value of a secured creditor’s collateral under §506(a) of the Bankruptcy Code² was the fair market value of the property as established by expert testimony and it was permissible to “strip the lien” of the creditor where it was unsupported by collateral value.

The bankruptcy case of TOUSA, Inc. and its various subsidiaries (collectively “Tousa”) is one where lenders have seen their fortunes rise and fall. On March 15, 2012, they fell again when the Eleventh Circuit¹ (the “Circuit Court”) reversed the District Court’s opinion and reinstated the Bankruptcy Court’s order, which had disgorged over $400 million from Tousa’s senior lenders and avoided certain guarantees and liens granted to them by the Conveying Subsidiaries (defined below).

On April 17, 2012, the Northern Mariana Islands Retirement Fund (the “Fund”) became the first United States public pension fund to seek formal bankruptcy protection. The Fund, which provides retirement benefits to government employees of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (the “Commonwealth”) a U.S. territory, listed $256 million in assets and $1 billion in liabilities and has alleged it will exhaust its claims paying ability by as early as 2014. ”

In Senior Transeastern Lenders v. Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (In re TOUSA, Inc.), the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the decision of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida (the “Bankruptcy Court”) in which the Bankruptcy Court avoided the liens given by TOUSA’s subsidiaries to new lenders and permitted the recovery of the proceeds of the new loan from other TOUSA lenders that had taken the funds in repayment of their TOUSA guaranteed loans.

On May 14, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld a ruling by the Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey that the fair market value of a creditor’s collateral as of the plan’s confirmation date is the proper method of valuing a secured creditor’s claim pursuant to section 506(a) of the Bankruptcy Code.  The Third Circuit also adopted a “burden-shifting framework,” finding that a secured creditor will bear the ultimate burden of proving the extent to which its claims are secured pursuant to section 506(a).

Background

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued its much anticipated decision in the TOUSA, Inc. bankruptcy cases on May 15, 2012.  The decision provides an ominous reminder to Lenders to carefully assess the value of accepting asset pledges or guarantees from borrowers’ subsidiaries, sometimes referred to as upstream guarantees.