In the Chapter 15 proceeding of Energy Coal S.p.A., the Delaware Bankruptcy Court required a U.S. creditor to recover its claim in Italy.
By most measures the economy is strong. Unemployment is low. The stock market is roaring. Gross domestic product is rising. Under these circumstances, bankruptcy is on few people’s minds.
Corporate bankruptcy tends to be cyclical, and bankruptcy filings trend up and down along with the direction of the macro economy. The last big surge in corporate bankruptcy filings came in the wake of last decade’s financial crisis (and closer to home here in Michigan, the automotive crisis) and “Great Recession.”
On February 16, 2018, the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued an opinion that may prove important for non-defaulting parties to trading contracts. In an appeal arising out of the Linn Energy bankruptcy, the district court held that a party seeking to terminate a safe-harbor contract pursuant to section 556 of the Bankruptcy Code is not restricted by any time limitation, and therefore does not waive its safe-harbor rights if it fails to terminate the contract within a certain amount of time.
Investors currently relying on certain of the Bankruptcy Code's safe harbor provisions to save them from clawback claims should consider finding new shelter. The U.S. Supreme Court in Merit Management Group, LP v.
A bankruptcy trustee or a debtor in possession has powers under the Bankruptcy Code to avoid certain transfers the debtor may have made prior to the petition date, including preferential and fraudulent transfers.
Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court, in Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc., Case No. 16-784, ruled that the “securities safe harbor” under section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. §§ 101-1532, does not shield transferees from liability simply because a particular transaction was routed through a financial intermediary—so-called “conduit transactions.”
On February 27, 2018, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion, authored by Justice Sotomayor, resolving a Circuit split over the interpretation of Section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code, the “safe harbor” provision that shields specified types of payments “made by or to (or for the benefit of)” a financial institution from avoidance on fraudulent transfer grounds.
On February 27, 2018, a unanimous Supreme Court held in Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc. (link here) that an otherwise-avoidable transfer is not subject to the safe harbor in Section 546(e) (which provides, in relevant part, a trustee may not avoid a transfer that is a “settlement payment . . . made by or to (or for the benefit of) a . . . financial institution” or that “is a transfer made by or to (or for the benefit of) a . . .
On February 27, 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc. The key issue in the case was the scope of Section 546(e) of the bankruptcy code which insulates certain transactions from a bankruptcy trustee’s statutory avoidance powers. A bankruptcy trustee may avoid many types of pre-petition transfers, including preferential payments made to creditors within 90 days of a bankruptcy petition and transfers made for less than reasonably equivalent value completed within two years of a bankruptcy filing.
Jet Midwest Group, LLC, has filed a petition for relief under Chapter 11 in the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware (Case No. 18-10395). The petition estimates the debtor’s assets and its liabilities to be between $10–$50 million. A claims and noticing agent has not yet been proposed.