Bankruptcy Court Disagrees with Second Circuit’s Holding in Tribune
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Financial Firms and Safe Harbors | 0

By Lee Harrington of Nixon Peabody.

Recently, in In re Physiotherapy Holdings Inc., the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware held that section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code did not preempt various state fraudulent transfer actions because the allegedly fraudulent transfers implicated neither the rationale for that section nor preemption generally. The decision is at odds with recent case law, notably: (i) the Tribune litigation, in which the Second Circuit concluded that state law constructive fraudulent transfer claims involving payments in LBO transactions are prohibited under section 546(e); and (ii) a proceeding in which the Southern District of New York concluded that the interest payment at issue, which did not retire the underlying debt, were not “settlement payments” and was thus outside section 546(e).

Section 546(e) precludes certain bankruptcy avoidance actions involving settlement payments made by or to a financial institution and transfers made by or to a financial institution in connection with a securities contract. It is intended to prevent litigation that might have a destabilizing “ripple effect” on the financial markets and provides a defense to constructive fraudulent transfer actions against shareholders receiving LBO payments.

Physiotherapy found that section 546(e) was not intended to shield “LBO payments to stockholders at the very end of the asset transfer chain, where the stockholders are the ultimate beneficiaries of the constructively fraudulent transfers, and can give the money back . . . with no damage to anyone but themselves” without the attendant destabilizing “ripple effect.”

The full memo is available here.

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The Bankruptcy Roundtable has previously covered treatment of 546(e), most recently in our Tribune Fraudulent Conveyance Litigation Roundup.

Texas Supreme Court Resolves Good Faith Value Defense Issue For Fifth Circuit
by | posted in: Avoidance | 0

By Michael L. Cook, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

The Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act (“UFTA”) (§ 8(a)), like Bankruptcy Code 548(c), provides a complete defense for a “good faith” transferee who gives “reasonably equivalent value” when receiving cash from a fraudulent debtor. Courts have been split as to whether the good faith defense is available to transferees of Ponzi scheme debtors in the fraudulent transfer context. Thus, the Fifth Circuit held an advertising firm in an SEC receiver’s Texas fraudulent transfer suit liable for $5.9 million it had received in good faith from a Ponzi scheme debtor. Janvey v. Golf Channel Inc., 780 F.3d 641, 646-47 (5th Cir. 2015 (advertising services had “no value” to Ponzi scheme creditors although services might be “quite valuable” to creditors of a legitimate business; reversed district court’s holding that defendant “looks more like an innocent trade creditor than a salesman…extending [debtor’s] Ponzi scheme.”)

The Fifth Circuit vacated its decision three months later and certified the question of “what showing of ‘value’ under [the Texas version of the [UFTA]] is sufficient for a transferee to prove…the [good-faith] affirmative defense….” 2016 WL 1268188, at *2. The Texas Supreme Court answered the question on April 1, 2016, after discussing the statutory purpose and reviewing what other federal and state courts have done. According to the court, the UFTA “does not contain separate standards for accessing ‘value’ and ‘reasonably equivalent value’ based on whether the debtor was operating a Ponzi scheme…. Value must be determined objectively at the time of the transfer and in relation to the individual exchange at hand rather than viewed in the context of the debtor’s enterprise.”

The full memo is available here: Texas Supreme Court Resolves Good Faith Defense Issue for Fifth Circuit

Rights of Creditors Will be Determined by Contract Terms and Fraudulent Conveyance Statutes—Quadrant v. Vertin
by | posted in: Avoidance | 0

By Abigail Pickering Bomba, Steven Epstein, Arthur Fleischer, Jr., Peter S. Golden, Brian T. Mangino, J.Christian Nahr, Philip Richter, Brad Eric Scheler, Robert C. Schwenkel, Gail Weinstein of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP

In Quadrant Structured Prods. Co., Ltd. v. Vertin, No. 6990-VCL, 2015 WL 6157759 (Del. Ch. Oct. 20, 2015), the Delaware Court of Chancery emphasized that creditors’ rights will flow from the contractually agreed terms of the debt, and that creditors’ derivative claims for breach of fiduciary duty will rarely succeed.

Fried Frank discusses whether there are circumstances under which a creditor’s claim for breach of fiduciary duty might succeed. Based on Vertin and a prior opinion in the case, it can be argued that a creditor’s fiduciary duty claim regarding a company’s post-insolvency adoption of an equity value maximization plan can succeed only if the directors were so uncareful or disloyal in formulating the plan, or the plan was so patently flawed, that the plan would not pass muster under the business judgment rule. Moreover, although the transactions in Vertin did not support a claim for breach of fiduciary duty, the opinion leaves open whether affiliated transactions may give rise to a creditor’s claim for breach of fiduciary duty.

For the full memo, please click here.