On Friday, the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance closed Bank of Ellijay, headquartered in Ellijay, Georgia, First Commerce Community Bank, headquartered in Douglasville, Georgia, and The Peoples Bank, headquartered in Winder, Georgia, and appointed the FDIC as receiver for each bank. The failed banks were not affiliated with one another.
On Friday, the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance closed ISN Bank, headquartered in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and appointed the FDIC as receiver for the bank.
CENTRAL STATES SOUTHEAST AND SOUTHWEST AREAS PENSION FUND v. O'NEILL BROS. TRANSFER & STORAGE (August 31, 2010)
On September 16, HM Treasury published its third consultation on new insolvency arrangements for investment firms. The consultation sets out the government’s final proposals for a special administration regime (SAR) for investment firms.
Introduction
After months of negotiations and conferences among key legislators, President Obama signed into law a final version of regulatory reform legislation on July 21, 2010. More than 2,000 pages long, the “Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” (the Act) provides new legal guidelines for both “financial companies” and non-financial companies and instructs federal agencies to develop a myriad of regulations to enforce the concepts provided in the Act.
Earlier this month, the Chapter 7 Trustee for the Rehrig International bankruptcy estate filed several preference actions against various defendants. As set forth in the complaints, the Trustee seeks to avoid and recover payments which he contends are preferential transfers, fraudulent conveyances and/or postpetition transfers. Rehrig filed for bankruptcy on September 5, 2008. Less than four months later, Rehrig’s Chapter 11 proceedings were converted to cases under chapter 7. Soon after the conversion to Chapter 7, the Office of the United States Trustee appointed George L.
In a May 28, 2010 decision, Judge Alan Gold of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida granted a motion to dismiss claims filed against lenders on a revolving loan agreement to the Fontainebleau resort and casino project in Las Vegas. The claims were brought by two term loan lenders for the project, Avenue CLO Fund, which had provided term loan funding, and Aurelius Capital, which had acquired the interests of other term lenders following the project’s bankruptcy.
After nearly fifteen years of unsuccessful attempts to recover $71 million worth of securitized bonds after the 1990 bankruptcy of Continental Airlines, Inc., Bluebird Partners L.P. may have suffered its final defeat. In a recent decision by a New York trial court in Bluebird Partners v. The Bank of New York, et al., No. 601016/1996 (New York Co. June 7, 2010), the court granted summary judgment to defendant Bank of New York (“BNY”), holding that the bank behaved prudently in establishing a litigation reserve fund as the collateral trustee in the airline’s bankruptcy.
In a decision that may create a significant roadblock for companies saddled with environmental clean-up liability to continue as a going concern, the Seventh Circuit in U.S. v. Apex Oil Company, Inc., 579 F.3d 734 (7th Cir. 2009) affirmed a district court injunction requiring the clean-up of a contaminated site in Illinois under section 7003 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) despite the company's bankruptcy. On September 27, 2010, the Supreme Court is scheduled to discuss whether to grant review of the Apex decision.