In recognition of the 15th anniversary of the passage of chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, the New York City Bar Association’s Bankruptcy & Corporate Reorganization Committee hosted a webinar on May 12, 2021 to discuss the current state of chapter 15 cases and potential, corresponding and significant future developments.[1]Several dozen participants joined a panel of distinguished leaders in the field: the Honorable Allan Gropper, former United

We have blogged previously about section 546(e), the Bankruptcy Code’s safe harbor for certain transfers otherwise subject to avoidance as preferences or fraudulent transfers. See 11 U.S.C. § 546(e). Among the transfers protected by the section 546(e) safe harbor are transfers by or to a “financial participant” made “in connection with a securities contract.” Id.

I don’t know if Congress foresaw, when it enacted new Subchapter V of Chapter 11 of the Code[1] in the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (“SBRA”), that debtors in pending cases would seek to convert or redesignate their cases as Subchapter V cases when SBRA became effective on February 19, 2020, but it was foreseeable.

We have noodled on the impact that the Supreme Court’s decision in Merit Management Group, LP v.

Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, added in 2005, provides a route for debtors to obtain US recognition of their insolvency proceedings in other countries. A foreign proceeding can be recognized under chapter 15 as either a “foreign main proceeding” or a “foreign nonmain proceeding.” 11 U.S.C. § 1517. Recognition as a foreign main proceeding entitles a debtor to certain rights, such as the automatic stay of actions against the debtor that would normally be imposed in a bankruptcy case filed in the United States. 11 U.S.C. § 1520.

It always amazes me when, after more than a half-century of Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) jurisprudence, an issue one thinks would arise quite commonly appears never to have been decided in a reported case. Such an issue was recently decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in an adversary proceeding in the Pettit Oil Co. Chapter 7 case.[1]

In a recent cross-border insolvency case, In re Agrokor d.d., 591 B.R. 163 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2018), Judge Glenn of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York recognized and enforced a restructuring plan approved by a Croatian court. Due to the nature of the debt to be discharged under the plan, the Court went through an in-depth analysis of international comity in the context of international bankruptcy law.

An accounting firm in the United States must produce workpapers to a chapter 15 foreign representative even if the law where the foreign main proceeding is pending would not permit such production. CohnReznick LLP v. Foreign Representatives of Platinum Partners Value Arbitrage Fund L.P. (In re Platinum Partners Value Arbitrage Fund L.P.), No. 18-5176 (DLC), 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 109684 (S.D.N.Y June 29, 2018).

This post reviews some concepts concerning executory contracts. The ground covered will be familiar to insolvency experts and should be insightful for readers who don’t specialize in U.S. bankruptcy law.

When the fallout from failed intellectual-property litigation collides with bankruptcy, the complexities may be dizzying enough, but when the emerging practices and imperatives of litigation financing are imposed on those complexities, the situation might be likened to three-dimensional chess. But in the court of one veteran bankruptcy judge, the complexities were penetrated to reveal that elementary errors and oversights can have decisive effects.