On December 5, 2013, Judge Steven Rhodes of the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan held that the city of Detroit had satisfied the five expressly delineated eligibility requirements for filing under Chapter 9 of the US Bankruptcy Code¹ and so could proceed with its bankruptcy case.

On April 16, 2013, in Morning Mist Holdings Ltd. v. Krys (In re Fairfield Sentry Ltd.),¹ the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued an important decision informing fundamental concepts of cross-border insolvency law as implemented pursuant to Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code.

Did you know... that the court may, in special circumstances, exercise its discretion to appoint pre-existing receivers as a company’s provisional liquidators.

In the recent decision ofRe K Vision International Investment (Hong Kong) Limited, the Honourable Mr. Justice Barma confirmed that, where the circumstances require it, the court will exercise its discretion to appoint pre-existing receivers of a company’s assets as that company’s provisional liquidators provided that potential conflicts of interest are identified and appropriately addressed.

The Bankruptcy Court for the District of Massachusetts recently issued an opinion in In re SW Boston Hotel Venture, LLC¹ in which it found, among other things, that the assignment of voting rights from a junior creditor to a senior creditor pursuant to an intercreditor agreement was unenforceable. The opinion was rendered in connection with the court’s decision to confirm the plan proposed by the debtor, the owner of the W Hotel in Boston.

Background

Introduction

An adjudicator can only deal with one dispute under one contract. In Enterprise v McFadden the adjudicator could not therefore deal with a claim to a net balance arising out of mutual dealings on four separate subcontracts (one of which was not even a construction contract) under Rule 4.90 of the Insolvency Rules 1986. Tripartite adjudication is not possible so the adjudication could not cope with a cross claim which would have involved joining assignors.

Overview

In a recent decision, Judge David Novak of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia vacated the Chapter 11 plan confirmation order entered by the bankruptcy court in the Mahwah Bergen Retail Group (formerly known as Ascena Retail Group) case, holding that the plan’s non-consensual third-party releases were unenforceable.¹ The ruling arrived shortly after an

Background

Fallout continues from the November 2020 bankruptcy sale of Town Sports’ assets to a new entity backed, in part, by an ad hoc group of Town Sports’ prepetition lenders.