Sears Holding: A Case Study in Valuing Collateral in Chapter 11
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Chapter 11, Reorganization, Valuation | 0

By Mark G. Douglas and Oliver S. Zeltner (Jones Day)

Mark G. Douglas
Oliver S. Zeltner

Valuation is a critical and indispensable part of the bankruptcy process. How collateral and other estate assets (and even creditor claims) are valued determines a wide range of issues, from a secured creditor’s right to adequate protection, postpetition interest, or relief from the automatic stay to a proposed chapter 11 plan’s satisfaction of the “best interests” test or whether a “cramdown” plan can be confirmed despite the objections of dissenting creditors. Depending on the context, bankruptcy courts rely on numerous different standards to value estate assets, including book, retail, wholesale, liquidation, forced-sale, going-concern, and reorganization value.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently examined collateral valuation in a chapter 11 case for the purpose of determining whether junior secured creditors were entitled to “super-priority” administrative claims to compensate them for alleged diminution in the value of their collateral after the petition date and before the bankruptcy court approved a sale of the debtors’ business as a going concern. In ESL Investments, Inc. v. Sears Holdings Corp. (In re Sears Holdings Corp.), 51 F.4th 53 (2d Cir. 2022), cert. denied sub nom. Cyrus Capital Partners, L.P. v. Sears Holdings Corp., No. 22-765 (U.S. Mar. 20, 2023), the Second Circuit held that, given the uncertainty surrounding the retail debtors’ fate at the time they filed for bankruptcy, the bankruptcy court did not err in valuing inventory collateral at its “net orderly liquidation value,” rather than book value, going-out-of-business sale value, or forced liquidation value. The Second Circuit also found no fault with the bankruptcy court’s decision to value non-borrowing base inventory at zero and to ascribe full face value to undrawn letters of credit where, among other things, the junior lenders failed to meet their evidentiary burden of suggesting a reasonable alternative.

There are several key takeaways from the Second Circuit’s ruling in Sears Holding.

First, valuation in bankruptcy is a fact-specific inquiry, and the selection of an appropriate valuation method, guided by section 506(a) of the Bankruptcy Code, is committed to the sound discretion of the Bankruptcy Court.

Second, Sears Holding is a testament to the consequences of failing to satisfy evidentiary burdens. The Second Circuit found no error in the bankruptcy court’s decision to ascribe no value to certain inventory and to discount to zero the full face value of undrawn letters of credit because the junior lenders had the burden of proposing a reasonable alternative but repeatedly failed to do so.

Third, the Second Circuit reaffirmed in Sears Holding that applicable U.S. Supreme Court precedent regarding valuation in a chapter 13 case also applies in chapter 11, requiring the bankruptcy court to be guided in its valuation by the use or disposition likely for the subject collateral, rather than some hypothetical use or disposition.

The Supreme Court denied the junior lenders’ petition for review of the Second Circuit’s decision on March 20, 2023.

Click here to read the full article.

Recent Developments at the Intersection of Bankruptcy and Environmental Law
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Chapter 11, Environmental Liabilities | 0

By Thomas Goslin (Weil, Gotshal, & Manges LLP)

Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert E. Gerber once observed that issues as to the interplay between environmental law and bankruptcy are among the thorniest on the litigation map.  Difficulties navigating this interplay largely stem from the inherent conflict between the goals of bankruptcy and environmental laws, with the former aimed at providing debtors with a fresh start, while the latter cast a broad net to hold parties (even some innocent parties) responsible for past harm to the environment.  Despite the fact that modern environmental laws have been on the books for over 40 years, and that bankruptcy laws were first enacted in the earliest days of the Republic, relatively few courts have had occasion to opine on the treatment of a bankrupt debtor’s environmental liabilities.  As such, those stuck at the intersection of bankruptcy and environmental law often lack clarity as to how or whether a debtor’s environmental liabilities can be addressed through a restructuring.  This is particularly true when the liabilities arise from contaminated property owned by a debtor, which generally cannot be discharged in a chapter 11 case.

Two recent bankruptcy cases, however, have provided debtors and their advisors with new options for managing environmental liabilities associated with contaminated land.  As discussed in detail in the article, developments in the pending chapter 11 case of Exide Holdings Inc. have both expanded the universe of cases where an environmental trust may provide an avenue for relief, as well as provided much needed clarity on when and under what circumstances a debtor may abandon contaminated real property under section 554 of the bankruptcy code.  In a separate case, involving defense contractor Wellman Dynamics Corporation, the debtor and one of its secured creditors were able to negotiate a novel settlement with state and federal environmental regulators, which facilitated the sale of the debtor’s operations, including heavily contaminated land, under an arrangement where the buyer would fund remediation efforts based on an ability-to-pay formula tied to revenues generated from the acquired operations.  While dire circumstances in both cases no doubt contributed to the unique results, the outcomes suggest that there may be more options available for debtors seeking to address liabilities arising from contaminated real property than previously thought.         

The full article is available here.

Hidden Wealth Transfers in Bankruptcy Asset Sales: A Real Option Analysis
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Chapter 11 | 0

By Jordan Neyland (Assistant Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University) and Kathryn St. John (Legal Associate, Supreme Court of Victoria)

Jordan Neyland
Kathryn St. John

One of the most important decisions that firms and courts face in bankruptcy is how to dispose of company assets. The differences between the available options are not trivial. A popular mechanism is contained in §363 of the bankruptcy code, which enables the sale of a firm’s assets with court approval. This allows for a quick sale of a firm without the need for developing and approving a plan of reorganization under Chapter 11, which can save both time and money, as the firm’s assets may otherwise sit idle or depreciate. 

Despite the benefits of a quicker resolution, 363 sales are contentious because certain classes of claimants, particularly shareholders and unsecured creditors, may lose a valuable opportunity to “wait and see” if the value of the assets will increase. Given that unsecured creditors and shareholders are last in line to get paid, they may gain if the asset value increases, whereas secured creditors prefer a quick sale to cash out before any value is potentially lost. But how much shareholder and unsecured creditor wealth is lost as the lottery-like opportunity, or “option” to wait, disappears? Without an active market for these rights, this value is unseen, yet very real.

In a recent article, we investigate the value of this option and how it affects the wealth of the parties to the bankruptcy. We use well-established financial models (i.e., Black-Scholes-Merton) to put a dollar value on how much shareholders lose with the approval of a 363 sale. We take numerical values from the seminal case In re Lionel Corp., 722 F.2d 1063 (2d Cir. 1983), which provides an ideal case study because most of the firm value was from equity holdings in a publicly traded company. 

The results are dramatic. Under certain conditions, shareholders stand to lose value worth more than one quarter of total firm assets from a 363 sale. That is, by forgoing the “wait and see” option, shareholder value decreases from around one quarter of the firm’s assets to close to zero. In the Lionel case, where the value of the firm’s assets was about $170 million, this decline in value equates to wiping out nearly $45 million in shareholder wealth. Higher priority claimants capture that value.

Even under more conservative estimates, we show that shareholder and lower-priority creditor wealth is dramatically affected by the loss of the “wait and see” option. Large amounts of wealth may be transferred from shareholders to creditors by bringing forward assets sales by just a few months.

We identify factors that are likely to influence the magnitude of the “hidden” shareholder and lower-priority creditor wealth loss. These include the volatility and value of the asset to be sold, in addition to the difference between the time required to arrange an asset sale and the time it may take to finalize a plan of reorganization. We note that the current common law rules governing 363 sales do not require consideration of this set of factors, which are potentially more value-relevant than factors, such as asset depreciation, that courts currently use to determine whether a business justification for a sale exists.

We suggest that courts consider the factors identified in our analysis and the “hidden” wealth effects when deciding whether to approve a 363 sale. This consideration should improve courts’ understanding of parties’ stakes and incentives, leading to better informed decision-making.

The full article is available here.

Do the Right Firms Survive Bankruptcy?
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Jurisprudence | 0
Samuel Antill
Samuel Antill

By Samuel Antill (Stanford Graduate School of Business)

In Chapter 11 bankruptcies, a court-supervised negotiation among creditors leads to one of two possible forms of exit, liquidation or emergence. In a liquidation, the bankrupt firm’s assets are sold (piecemeal or in a going-concern sale). Alternatively, if creditors agree to restructure the firm’s liabilities, the firm emerges and continues operating. I estimate a structural model of the choice between emergence and liquidation. In my sample of large-firm bankruptcies, I estimate that creditor recovery was substantially reduced by inefficient decisions to liquidate.

According to the “creditor’s bargain” theory of bankruptcy, the efficient form of exit (liquidation or emergence) from Chapter 11 is that which optimizes total expected creditor recovery. Beyond the importance to creditor recovery, an efficient approach to choosing between liquidation and emergence benefits pre-bankruptcy equity holders through lower costs of credit. The efficient form of exit from bankruptcy should be achieved, under the conditions of the Coase Theorem, by the bargaining among creditors that Chapter 11 is supposed to promote. Without this bargaining, potential coordination failures arise when each creditor pursues the form of exit that maximizes its own payoff.

In contrast to the view that Coasian bargaining in Chapter 11 successfully preserves viable firms, I estimate that inefficient decisions to liquidate are frequent. However, very few of the firms in my sample were inefficiently selected to emerge. I provide an explanation for this asymmetry. Exiting Chapter 11 through a confirmed plan of reorganization requires creditor consent under established voting rules. In contrast, Section 363(b) of the bankruptcy code allows managers to sell assets, or entire firms, without creditor approval. This procedure circumvents the bargaining among creditors that Chapter 11 supposedly promotes. I show that inefficient liquidations are concentrated in cases involving “363 sales.” This statistical association suggests that Section 363(b) enables the sort of coordination failure that Chapter 11 was designed to prevent. For example, these results are consistent with a view that managers may be inefficiently liquidating firms in order to benefit senior lenders or to obtain a job for themselves at a purchasing company.

Finally, I find that inefficient liquidations are largely avoidable. Using my estimated model, I consider the following counterfactual: how would expected creditor recovery change if form-of-exit decisions had been made by a statistical model? In this counterfactual scenario, the courts would hire a statistician to compare the expected potential recovery rates implied by my fitted model and recommend either liquidation or emergence. Each recommendation depends only on data available at the start of a given bankruptcy. I find that such a court statistician could dramatically improve average recovery.

The full article is available here.

Bankruptcy Sales: Is A Public Auction Required to Assure That Property Is Sold for The Highest and Best Price?
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Fiduciary Duties, Valuation | 0

By Vicki R. Harding (Vicki R. Harding, PLLC)

A buyer negotiating acquisition of commercial real estate from a Chapter 7 trustee or a Chapter 11 debtor-in-possession will almost always hear the mantra: “I have a fiduciary duty to maximize value for the benefit of the bankruptcy estate” – which the seller insists means the property must be sold through a public auction. The potential buyer may be designated as the stalking horse (e.g. its offer will be treated as an opening bid), and it may have input on the bidding procedures (bidder qualifications, minimum overbid, purchase price payment terms, etc.). But at the end of the day it runs a risk that after investing time and money in pursuing the acquisition someone else may be selected as having made a “higher and better” offer.

However, that is not always the case.  In re 160 Royal Palm, LLC, 600 B.R. 119 (S.D. Fla. 2019) presents an interesting case study. As discussed in Bankruptcy Sales: Highest Is Not Always Best, the bankruptcy court allowed a debtor to withdraw property from a previously authorized public auction and to proceed with a private sale to a designated buyer, subject only to an overbid by the stalking horse from the public auction. The court approved the private sale over the objection of a third party that claimed that in a public auction it would bid at least $1 million more than the private sale purchase price.

The full article is available here.

A New PDVSA? The Transfer of Venezuela’s Oil Assets to a Successor Entity and Fraudulent Conveyance
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, International and Comparative | 0

By Richard Levin (Jenner & Block LLP) and Roland Pettersson (LEC Abogados).

This Working Paper analysis the hypothetical transfer and conveyance of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A.’s assets to a new state-owned entity by the Venezuelan Government, and the possible creditor responses to such action, on account of the Venezuela’s NOC current financial-distress situation. The study is conducted from the perspective of Venezuelan law, which might provide certain legal remedies under Civil, Commercial and Administrative law—although with somehow little practical success expectations, given other factors and externalities—as well as from the perspective of U.S. law, which is of particular relevance, given (i) significant asset exposure in the U.S., where PDVSA—through CITGO—maintains an important operation, (ii) the contractual terms in the bulk of Venezuela and PDVSA’s financial indebtedness relies on U.S. law and provides for submission to the jurisdiction of NY courts, and (iii) many creditors are actually U.S. persons. Thus, this Working Paper examines the above situation, given the multiple issues and complexities on the case, starting from the very nature of PDVSA as an state-owned entity under Venezuelan law, but with particular emphasis on the creditors’ side of the equation and the theory of fraudulent transfer, which is analyzed both from the standpoint of Venezuelan law, as well as from U.S. insolvency framework and international law in general.

The full working paper is available here.

Junior Creditors Could Share In 363 Bankruptcy Sales
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Priority, Valuation | 0

By Charles Tabb and Tamar Dolcourt (Foley & Lardner LLP).

In July, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision that appeared to upend the long-held understanding that an underwater secured creditor was entitled to all of the proceeds of a sale under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code. In our new article, we analyzed the decision in Illinois Department of Revenue v. Hanmi Bank in which the Seventh Circuit opened the door to a potential recovery for out-of-the-money junior creditors based on the theory that a free and clear sale under the Bankruptcy Code created a premium for the assets that the junior creditor may be entitled to share. Though Hanmi dealt explicitly with a state taxing authority and its particular rights under Illinois state law, there is nothing in the opinion which limits it to those facts or that type of creditor. Furthermore, even though the court ultimately valued the interest that the Illinois Department of Revenue was forced to give up through the free and clear sale at zero, that was simply a failure of proof in the particular case. We also consider the long-term ramifications of this opinion and its likely effect on future sales under Section 363, including the possibility of increased costs and delays of negotiating these sales with recalcitrant junior creditors.

The article may be found at Law 360:  the original publication.

Selling Innovation in Bankruptcy
by | posted in: 363 Sale, Valuation | 0

By Song Ma (Yale School of Management), (Joy) Tianjiao Tong (Duke University, Fuqua School of Business), and Wei Wang (Queen’s School of Business).

The past decades have witnessed the emergence of patent sales in corporate bankruptcies. Yet we know little about the facts and rationales of these important economic transactions.

In this working paper, we assemble a comprehensive data set of US Chapter 11 filings, USPTO patent transaction documents, and court records on assets sales from the past three decades. We document three stylized facts on patent sales in bankruptcy. First, patent sales are pervasive — more than 40% of bankrupt firms sell at least one patent, and on average they sell 18% of their patent portfolios. Second, patent transactions occur immediately after bankruptcy filing — concentrating largely within the first two quarters after filing. Third, patents are frontloaded in general asset sales in bankruptcy — firms sell a disproportionately large quantity of patents in asset sales during the early period of reorganization.

Why do firms sell patents during bankruptcy? We design a set of empirical tests to study the economic decisions behind patent sales based on the two economic views on assets reallocation in bankruptcy, namely asset restructuring and financing through asset sales. Our results show that bankrupt firms reallocate patents that are more redeployable and trade in a more liquid market . We find no evidence that they sell underexploited or underperforming patents. This pattern of selling more liquid patents holds stronger in firms with financial distress, firms undergoing poor industry conditions, and firms lacking external financing. The combined evidence lends support to the view that firms sell innovation during bankruptcy for financing purposes rather than for asset restructuring. Additionally, we find that bankrupt firms try to retain the inventors of sold patents and continue to cite sold patents after their sale. The evidence overall suggests that a firm’s imminent financing needs interact with its intent to avoid bankruptcy costs in shaping a firm’s decision to sell patents in bankruptcy.

The full paper is available here.

 

The Roundtable will be off for the holidays. We’ll be back early after the New Year.

United States: In GM, Second Circuit Takes a Wrong Turn on Its Treatment of Unknown Claims
by | posted in: 363 Sale | 0

By Debra A. Dandeneau (Baker & McKenzie)

Elliott v. General Motors LLC (In re Motors Liquidation Co.), 829 F.3d 135 (2d Cir. 2016), addresses General Motors’ attempt to sell substantially all of its assets to “New GM” free and clear of certain claims of vehicle owners under the Bankruptcy Code.

“New GM” acquired GM’s assets in a bankruptcy court-approved sale. New GM assumed liability for claims arising from any accidents occurring after the closing date and for any express vehicle warranties. Three classes of vehicle purchasers were not covered:

– prepetition purchasers with prepetition injuries from the “ignition switch defect,”

– prepetition purchasers with economic damages as a result of defects not covered by an express warranty, and

– postpetition purchasers of used GM vehicles who claimed economic damages as a result of defects.

The Second Circuit held that a debtor may sell free and clear of successor liability claims, but independent claims against New GM were not covered by the “free and clear” sale.

The court applied a variation of the “relationship test,” which requires prepetition conduct by the debtor plus some minimum contact or relationship with the claimant, to determine whether the purchasers held “claims.” Both pre-closing accident claims and economic loss claims by prepetition purchasers constituted “claims,” but postpetition purchasers of used vehicles did not have “claims.”

To determine whether the holders of prepetition claims received sufficient notice, the Second Circuit focused on GM’s knowledge of the claims instead of its knowledge of the identity of the creditors.

The full client alert is available here.