U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York held on July 6, 2014 that the Madoff Securities SIPA trustee could not recover customer funds subsequently transferred abroad by “foreign feeder funds” to their foreign “customers, managers, and the like.” Securities Investor Protection Corp. v. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (In re Madoff Securities), 2014 WL 2998557, *1 (S.D.N.Y. July 6, 2014).

An indenture trustee learned a hard lesson last week when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that the description of a feature of its settlement with the debtor in a disclosure statement was inadequate and rendered a key element of the plan and the settlement unenforceable against third-party litigants. It is well established that adequate disclosure of a release provision contained in a reorganization plan is essential to its inclusion in the plan and its enforceability against third parties.

Law v Siegel, 134 Sup.Ct. 1188, 188 L.Ed.2d 146 (2014) -

A bankruptcy court ordered that a debtor’s homestead exemption be surcharged to pay the attorney’s fees of a Chapter 7 incurred in overcoming the debtor’s fraud. The order was affirmed on appeal until it reached the Supreme Court.

This is the third post in our Bitcoin Bankruptcy series on the Weil Bankruptcy Blog.  In the spring of this year, the shutdown of Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox made us think about what might have happened if Mt.

Last fall the CFJB update reported on In re Colson, No. 09-51954 (S.D. Miss. Sept.

American Apparel has been on the watch-list for those who follow distressed retailers for quite a while.  The company, known for its provocative advertising and American-made apparel, has approximately 249 retail stores in the U.S. and 19 other countries.

Recently, the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana stayed its own judgment pending an appeal to resolve doubt over the bankruptcy court’s authority to enter judgment on counterclaims related to a management agreement among Highsteppin’ Productions, L.L.C.

When a bank holding company files a chapter 11 case, a key factor to the success of the case will be whether the debtor previously made any commitment to a federal depository institution regulatory agency, such as the FDIC, to maintain the capital of the debtor’s bank subsidiary.  This is because section 365(o) of the Bankruptcy Code provides that the debtor is deemed to have assumed such obligations, and any claim for subsequent breach of these obligations is entitled to priority under section 507(a)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code.  The FDIC often demands

No extraterritorial application for Bankruptcy Code rules for recovering avoided transfers. A US District Court held that Bankruptcy Code Section 550(a), which allows a trustee to recover “property transferred to the extent that a transfer is avoided” under one of the Bankruptcy Code avoidance provisions, does not apply extraterritorially. The Securities Investor Protection Act trustee for Madoff securities sought to use Section 550(a) to recover assets transferred by foreign feeder funds abroad to their foreign customers.

On June 27, 2014, the Fourth Circuit issued its second opinion in the National Heritage Foundation, Inc.