Considerations of “environmental, social and governance” (or ESG) criteria with respect to a company’s management and operations continue to take on greater importance in lenders’ and investors’ credit and investment decisions. How a borrower or a target company measures up to these ever-developing ESG standards will impact its cost of capital and value to potential investors and acquirors.
Here’s a first of its kind: a report about federal judges mediating other judges’ cases.
- It’s a January 22, 2022, report titled, Other Judges’ Cases, authored by Melissa B. Jacoby, Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—scheduled to publish in 72 NYU Annual Survey of American Law (2022).
What follows is an attempt to summarize portions of the report, including its description of a can-this-actually-happen case.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its Fulton v. City of Chicagoopinion, let Chicago off the automatic stay hook for holding onto impounded vehicles owned by Chapter 13 debtors.
But Fulton is not the last word on that subject.
The new opinion is Cordova, et al. v. City of Chicago, Case No. 19-0684 in the Northern Illinois Bankruptcy Court (issued December 6, 2021, Doc. 154).
Background
The Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (SBRA) added subchapter V to chapter 11. In defining the eligibility for subchapter V, Congress amended the Bankruptcy Code’s definition of a “small business debtor” to exclude specifically corporations that are subject to the reporting requirements under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, essentially making publicly traded companies ineligible for subchapter V.
In this Business Blog mini-series, we will explore liquidity event options outside of an outright sale of the company. Over the last several years, legal changes have facilitated a robust growth in the private capital market as investors shifted more capital towards private companies causing private placement offerings for debt, equity, and hybrid securities to be more common. This trend has followed the enactment by the U.S. Congress of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act In 2012.
Elizabeth McColm, Brian Bolin and Grace Hotz, Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison
This is an extract from the 2022 edition of GRR's the Americas Restructuring Review. The whole publication is available here.
In summary
A Chapter 11 corporate debtor’s monetary penalty obligation owed to the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”), resulting from “fraud on consumers,” survived the debtor’s reorganization plan discharge, even when the FCC “was not a victim of the fraud,” held the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Sept. 2, 2021. In re Fusion Connect Inc., 2021 WL 3932346, *1 (S.D.N.Y. Sept. 2, 2021).
The year is 2012, and the biotech you founded has just received FDA approval for a wildly promising product with significant differentiation from other products in its class. You only have 35 employees, but begin to build a lean, incentive-based salesforce to launch your novel commercialization strategy built on a specialty distribution model, high-touch reimbursement support, aggressive marketing tactics, and premium pricing. Hiring a compliance officer is not a priority at this time.
We anticipate a more assertive regulatory enforcement program under the Biden administration, particularly focused on fund managers’ conflicts of interest, advisers’ codes of ethics, and related policies and procedures relating to material nonpublic information. These concerns may be heightened for fund managers participating in bankruptcy proceedings, where competing fiduciary obligations arise, particularly in the context of serving on creditors committees.
Two recent opinions from separate federal courts of appeal upheld the dismissal of lawsuits by sophisticated investors that suffered losses in the auction rate securities ("ARS") market against the securities broker-dealers that allegedly fraudulently induced the purchase of the ARS.1