During the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, it became commonplace for a distressed bank to be taken over(night) by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and then sold, that same day, to another bank (or bank holding company) that agreed to take on the depository liability associated with the failed bank in exchange for its assets (and customer base). Some banks, however, survived the tidal wave of takeovers.

As we began discussing this week in our previous entries, on August 26, 2014, Judge Drain of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York issued a momentous bench ruling in connection with the confirmation hearing of 

This is the last entry in our four-part series analyzing Judge Drain’s widely read bench ruling issued on August 26, 2014 in connection with the confirmation hearing of Momentive Performance Materials and its affiliated debtors.

In re The Free Lance-Star Publ’g Co. of Fredericksburg, VA, 512 B.R. 798 (Bankr. E.D. Va. 2014) –

After the debtors obtained court approval of bidding procedures to auction substantially all of their assets, a secured creditor sought a court determination that it had valid perfected liens on the assets, and the debtors sought to limit the secured creditor’s right to credit bid in the bankruptcy sales.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on Sept. 3, 2014, vacated bankruptcy court and district court Chapter 11 debtor-in-possession (“DIP”) financing orders due to: (1) the lender’s lack of good faith in relying on a third party’s shares of stock as collateral; and (2) the bankruptcy court’s lack of subject matter jurisdiction. In re TMT Procurement Corp., 2014 WL 4364894 (5th Cir. Sept. 3, 2014).

In a case that was converted from a chapter 11 reorganization to a chapter 7 liquidation, the debtor sought an order directing the trustee to abandon certain real estate, arguing that there was no equity for the bankruptcy estate. A lender had already obtained relief from the automatic stay permitting it to foreclose on the property, and the debtor wanted to do a short sale with the consent of the lender. The chapter 7 trustee opposed the motion.

On August 26, 2014, Judge Drain, of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, concluded the confirmation hearing in Momentive Performance Materials and issued several bench rulings on cramdown interest rates, the availability of a make-whole premium, third party releases, and the extent of the subordination of senior subordinated noteholders. This four-part Bankruptcy Blog series will examine Judge Drain’s rulings in detail, with Part I of this series providing you with a primer on cramdown in the secured creditor context.

On August 28, 2014, the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit^[1] delivered a stern admonition about the risk of failing to appeal when it ruled that a union that had not filed a notice of appeal could not benefit from a successful appeal by another union in the same matter.

The Supreme Judicial Court, the high court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has answered a certified question from the Bankruptcy Court about the interpretation of Massachusetts’s fine art consignment law, G.L. c. 104A.  The case, Eve Plumb et al. v.

In connection with a contentious restructuring, Judge Drain of the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled recently that certain lenders to Momentive Performance Materials Inc. (Case No. 14-22503) had no enforceable claim to a so-called “make-whole” premium.