Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC, No. 17-1657

Today, the Supreme Court held in an 8-1 decision that when a debtor, acting under Section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code, rejects a contract licensing its trademarks, the contract is not rescinded and the debtor thus cannot revoke the trademark license.

Over the past several years, non-recourse receivables financing has been embraced by many major financial institutions and non-bank investors in the US market. With its (i) favorable regulatory treatment for regulated institutions, (ii) perceived positive risk/reward profile and (iii) adaptability to recent technological advancements such as distributed ledger technology (i.e., blockchain), non-recourse receivables financing likely will grow increasingly popular in the US market.

The US Supreme Court has unanimously held that a debtor cannot void a wholly underwater second mortgage in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. The decision comes in the consolidated cases of Bank of America, N.A. v. Caulkett, No. 13-1421, and Bank of America, N.A. v. Toledo-Cardona, No. 14-163.

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has ruled that a lender’s security interest in accounts was not perfected because a reference to “proceeds” in the lender’s UCC financing statement did not expressly refer to “accounts.” The Sixth Circuit surprisingly interpreted the definition of “proceeds”1 in Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code to exclude “accounts”2 (despite and without reference to provisions of UCC Article 9 to the contrary).

The Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has held that a cross-affiliate netting provision in an ISDA swap agreement is unenforceable in bankruptcy. In the SIPA proceedings of Lehman Brothers Inc. (LBI), UBS AG (UBS) sought to offset UBS’s obligation to return excess collateral to LBI against claims purportedly owed by LBI to UBS subsidiaries, UBS Securities and UBS Financial Services.

On 18 May 2010, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and its associated debtors (together, the "Debtors") filed a further six omnibus objections to claims filed in their Chapter 11 proceedings with the US Bankruptcy Court (the "Objections"). The Objections contain orders prepared by the Debtors on behalf of the US Bankruptcy Court which, if granted, will enable the Debtors to disallow and expunge the claims identified in each of the Objections from the register of claims.

In a somewhat unexpected development given his recent appointment to a second 14-year term a mere 5 years ago, Bankruptcy Judge Robert D. Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York announced that he intends to retire as of June 30, 2022.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, on February 25, 2021, a New York bankruptcy court dismissed the involuntary bankruptcy petition brought earlier in the month by three student loan borrowers against Navient Solutions (see our prior post on the borrowers’ petition here). Navient is the student loan servicing arm of Navient Corporation, one of the world’s largest student loan-originators.

Credit bidding is a mechanism, enshrined in the US bankruptcy legislation, whereby a secured creditor can ‘bid’ the amount of its secured debt, as consideration for the purchase of the assets over which it holds security. In effect, it allows the secured creditor to offset the secured debt as payment for the assets and to take ownership of those assets without necessarily having to pay any cash for the purchase. Whilst there is no statutory equivalent in the UK, the process has evolved here into an accepted practice.

With a slowdown in capital markets activity and sharply decreased economic activity, the pressures on borrowers (and therefore their lenders) are only going to increase in the near term.