Last week’s Chapter 11 filing by NewPage Corporation, a company with assets and liabilities in the billions of dollars, stands as a relative rarity in the current restructuring environment.

On September 7, 2011, NewPage Corporation ("NewPage" or "Debtors") filed petitions for bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.  As stated in NewPage's Declaration in Support of First Day Motions (the "Declaration" or "Decl."), filed with the Bankruptcy Court, NewPage produces coated paper used in magazines, brochures catalogs and textbooks.  NewPage manufactures its products in paper mills located in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Decl. at *4.

In a ruling that comes as a blow to organized labor and a boon to employers in bankruptcy, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently broke new appellate ground in holding that Section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code permits debtors to reject the terms and conditions of an expired collective bargaining agreement (CBA).

The hurdles for KERP programs have been raised too high, causing debtors to lose critical personnel to the detriment of post-petition operations, say Frost Brown Todd’s Ronald Gold and Doug Lutz in our series of chats with high-profile bankruptcy lawyers.

Q. What’s the most challenging bankruptcy you’ve worked on, and why?

Bankruptcy practitioners and plan beneficiaries should take note of a little-known ERISA amendment that impacts bankruptcy cases filed on or after September 16, 2006. On June 30, 2008, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (the "PBGC") released a proposed rule clarifying how Section 404 ("Section 404") of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (the "PPA") will be implemented. Section 404 amends Title IV of ERISA in certain key respects.

In these troubled times for the fashion and apparel industry, with consumer spending falling dramatically, many brands in need of capital will be forced to place their companies up for sale. This present a prime opportunity for companies looking to make a key acquisition.

A common strategy for acquiring the business of a troubled company is to purchase assets rather than acquire all outstanding capital stock of the target, based on the general principle that a purchaser of assets is not responsible for liabilities of its seller absent an express or implied assumption. Does the strategy work?

Retiree benefits are often a central issue in bankruptcy cases. For many employers the high cost of retiree medical benefits has been a significant contributing factor to the Chapter 11 filing and a matter of ongoing concern if the debtor is to be able to successfully reorganize. Understandably, employees, retirees and unions are equally concerned about the status of retiree benefits. Their obvious interest is to attempt to prevent the erosion of benefits that had been expected to be available during retirement.

This morning, General Motors Corp. (GM) announced in a Form 8-K filing that the U.S. Treasury Department has proposed details of a reorganization plan to GM in the event that GM seeks bankruptcy protection and bankruptcy court approval for the sale of substantially all of its assets to a newly organized company (New GM) pursuant to Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code (363 Sale). Following the proposed 363 Sale, the U.S.

In In re City of Vallejo,1 the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of California held recently that the City of Vallejo has the authority to reject its collective bargaining agreements with the city’s firefighters and electrical workers as part of its chapter 9 bankruptcy proceeding without going through the process detailed in section 1113 of the Bankruptcy Code. The bankruptcy court determined that a municipality does not need to comply with the stringent requirements that corporations face when seeking to reject a collective bargaining agreement (a “CBA”).