Major legislative changes
Reform of English corporate insolvency framework
The Insolvency Service is reviewing responses to its consultation on significant reforms designed to improve the restructuring tools available to companies. These include:
Recently, a bankruptcy court in the First Circuit, confronted with whether the debtors’ chapter 12 case could be converted to a chapter 11 case – an issue over which there is split in the case law – determined that the Debtors’ chapter 12 case could not be converted to a chapter 11 case.
Relevant Statutes and Statutory Provisions:
By now (unless you’ve been living under a rock), we’re all familiar with the expression, “Netflix and chill.” It’s everywhere. Flooding your Instagram feed with duplicitous memes. Halloween costumes. Really, really bad pick-up lines. Like the many trite colloquialisms that have come before it, Netflix and chill’s ubiquity has begun to wane with overuse and time.
Early this week, a California Bankruptcy Court schooled counsel on abiding by local rules, avoiding gamesmanship, and maintaining a level of civility in litigation proceedings. These lessons arose in the context of an adversary proceeding in which counsel filed an emergency motion for a continuance of the deadline to respond to a complaint following retention of new counsel.
Lesson #1: Check for Typos
Funds passing through a correspondent bank account in New York can create personal jurisdiction over the funds’ recipient, ruled the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Arcapita Bank B.S.C. v.
Practitioners that exclusively represent clients in large scale restructurings and chapter 11 reorganizations may be used to the debtor remaining in place with senior management continuing to oversee the day to day operations of the company and overseeing the debtor’s reorganization case. It may seem strange then to such practitioners that, unlike in chapter 11 cases, the debtor in a chapter 7 case often has only a limited role in its own bankruptcy case after the initial debtor interview and the section 341 meeting of creditors. In a chapter 7 case, a trustee is appointed and i
Now that we’ve recovered from the balmy holidays, survived a record snowstorm in New York, eaten way too many snacks at Super Bowl parties, wished everyone a Happy Year of the Monkey, enjoyed two long weekends, and debated the effects of the passing of Justice Scalia, it’s time to settle back down to business and take the rest of this short week to catch up on what you may have missed in the Weil Bankruptcy Blog so far this year.
Bankruptcy Code Preempts McCarran-Ferguson Act in Dispute Over Courts’ Jurisdiction
A foreign company makes a foreign distribution to foreign shareholders shortly before merging with a U.S. company in a highly-leveraged LBO. The resulting company files a chapter 11 petition in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York 13 months later. Can the foreign transfer be avoided as a fraudulent conveyance under section 548 of the Bankruptcy Code? Previously, the answer was almost certainly not (at least in the Southern District of New York).
“Desperate times call for desperate measures” is often a rallying cry to justify harsh actions taken during times of panic and uncertainty which, in retrospect, are regrettable. To protect against such adverse consequences in bankruptcy, there are and should be safeguards in place to prevent creditors from imposing unreasonable restrictions on a debtor at the immediate onset of an involuntary case. In