[Texas Two-Step and the Future of Mass Tort Bankruptcy Series] The Texas Two-Step: The Code Says it’s a Transfer
by | posted in: Avoidance, Bankruptcy, Chapter 11, fraudulent transfer, Reorganization, Statutory Interpretation, Texas Two-Step and the Future of Mass Tort Bankruptcy Series | 0

By Mark Roe and William Organek (Harvard Law School)

Note: This is the seventh in a series of posts on the Texas Two-Step, the bankruptcy of LTL Management, and the future of mass tort bankruptcies.  Check the HLS Bankruptcy Roundtable throughout the summer for additional contributing posts by academics from institutions across the country.

Earlier posts in this series can be found here (by Jin Lee and Amelia Ricketts), here (by Jonathan C. Lipson), here (by Jared A. Ellias), here (by Anthony Casey and Joshua Macey), here (by David Skeel), and here (by Ralph Brubaker).

***

Mark Roe
William Organek

Considerable attention is now being paid to the Texas Two-Step in bankruptcy. The Two-Step anticipates the movement of assets and liabilities from one corporate entity to another, via a divisive merger that splits the assets and liabilities of the original entity. After the movement of the assets and liabilities, the liabilities sit in one entity (often a subsidiary of a larger enterprise). Meanwhile, the liabilities are separated from many of the assets (in the most controversial form of the Two-Steps), which sit in another entity. The entity with the bulk of the liabilities then files for bankruptcy. The Two-Step is central to the Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”) bankruptcy of a subsidiary, aiming to separate the talc liabilities from J&J’s extensive assets.

When assets are transferred from a firm that is thereby rendered insolvent, or when the assets are transferred with actual intent to hinder, delay or defraud creditors, the transferred assets can, of course, be recovered by the transferring firm as a fraudulent transfer.  Bankr. Code § 548.  Similar transactions are regularly accomplished under corporate structures as spinoffs: the firm moves assets into a subsidiary, for example, and then “spins” off the subsidiary’s stock to the firm’s stockholders. After the spinoff the old stockholders own two companies, one with the assets (and possibly some of the liabilities of the just-created subsidiary) and the other with the liabilities (and any remaining assets) of the original company.

The Texas divisive merger statute creates a fraudulent transfer conundrum, because it says movements of assets pursuant to a divisive merger are not transfers.  If there’s no transfer, there’s no fraudulent transfer liability, as there must first be a transfer for there to be liability.

If the bankruptcy process were ousted of power to control fraudulent transfers, then the debtor firm would have more freedom to move assets and liabilities in ways that would allow the firm to escape liability. No judge would get to the meaty issues (e.g., was the transferring firm insolvent? were the transfers done with intent to hinder, delay, or defraud creditors? is the bankrupt firm with the bulk of the liabilities an alter ego or successor of the original firm?) because there’d never have been a triggering transfer.

The Texas statute itself is clear on its face that there’s no transfer under Texas law:

When a merger takes effect . . . all rights, title and interests to all . . . property owned by each . . . party to the merger is allocated . . . as provided in the plan of merger without . . . any transfer or assignment having occurred . . .

Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 10.008(a) (emphasis added).

Commentators have noted that a Two-Stepping debtor might make such an argument. While it has not yet been explicitly raised in the LTL bankruptcy, the commentators anticipated correctly that such an argument was coming.  In another pending Texas Two-Step bankruptcy, In re DBMP, the debtor made this argument at length. In an oral ruling1 delivered a little more than a week ago, on July 7, Judge Craig Whitley agreed with the key plain meaning premises of the Two-Step argument but ultimately rejected it as facilitating “wholesale fraud.”

The court began by accepting the debtor’s interpretation that, under a plain meaning reading of the Texas statute, no transfer occurred; and under a plain meaning reading of section 548 of the Bankruptcy Code, a transfer is a necessary predicate for a fraudulent transfer to have occurred. Hence, a plain meaning construction of section 548 and the Texas statute means no fraudulent transfer exposure.

Judge Whitley saw where such a plain meaning reading led, but refused to go there, rejecting the debtor’s conclusion. Going down the plain meaning route would, he said, lead to absurd results, leaving plaintiffs with “no recourse whatsoever.” And such a reading would contradict another provision of the Texas statute, which states that a divisive merger is not meant to “abridge any . . . rights of any creditor under existing law,” Tex. Bus. Orgs. Code § 10.901. Finally, Judge Whitley went deep: such a plain language reading of the Texas statute would run contrary to longstanding general principles of Anglo-American fraudulent transfer law.

Judge Whitley’s conclusion was in our view correct. But the conclusion can be reached more directly—by a plain meaning reading of the Bankruptcy Code.

The bankruptcy courts have already been instructed by Congress not to pay attention to the Texas statute, even when the state statute declares that an asset disposition in a divisive merger is not a transfer.  True, considerable policy issues (e.g., supremacy of federal law, the extent to which state property and contract law is incorporated into the bankruptcy process) could well be brought to bear if the Bankruptcy Code were unclear here. But the most straightforward way to answer the question raised in DBMP comes from a parsimonious textual analysis of the Code.

Here’s the Bankruptcy Code’s two-step ouster of the Texas Two-Step:

Step 1:

The text of the fraudulent transfer statute, section 548, begins: “The trustee may avoid any transfer . . .  of an interest of the debtor in property . . . ” (emphasis added). If we stop there, a basis might be had for examining state law for whether a transfer cognizable under the Bankruptcy Code has taken place.  Property is, after all, transferred under state law.

But the Code does not say that state law governs whether a movement of property is a bankruptcy transfer. The Code itself defines the term “transfer” and does so independently of state laws’ appellations, leading to Step 2 of the ouster.

Step 2:

Section 101(54) defines what a “transfer” is for bankruptcy purposes, such as section 548 (governing fraudulent transfers).  It states: “The term ‘transfer’ means . . .  each mode, direct or indirect, absolute or conditional, voluntary or involuntary, of disposing of or parting with (i) property; or (ii) an interest in property.”

The Code thereby instructs bankruptcy courts to conclude that a transfer has occurred for each “mode . . . of disposing of . . . property . . . .”  A divisive merger under Texas law is surely a “mode . . . of disposing of . . . property. . . .”  As a result, for bankruptcy purposes a Texas two-step is a transfer, whatever the Texas authorities decide to call it.  And, therefore, the Texas Two-Step should have no import in bankruptcy for determining whether there’s been a transfer for bankruptcy purposes.  Property has been disposed of. Thus, for Code purposes there is a “transfer.”  The first statutory predicate to considering whether there has been a fraudulent transfer has been satisfied and the court could then go on to the other, meaty fraudulent transfer issues. The Texas Two-Step is a transfer because the Bankruptcy Code says it is.

While we reach an identical conclusion to that of Judge Whitley, and we do not fault his reasoning from the bench, our analytic path is better in the long run for bankruptcy decisionmaking. The court’s reliance upon the best way to interpret the potential contradictions of the Texas Business Organizations Code is a precarious foundation for the ruling. One could imagine another bankruptcy court, faced with the Texas statute’s contradictions (“it’s not a transfer” vs. “it’s not in derogation of any other right”), interpreting and concluding differently.2 Another judge might not consider such a result as absurd as Judge Whitley and we do. And yet another bankruptcy court could feel compelled to certify questions to the Texas Supreme Court on how to interpret the Texas divisive merger statute and its impact.

***

The new mass tort bankruptcies present major issues of policy and statutory construction for which answers will not be assured and apparent. But the question of whether there is a transfer for bankruptcy purposes is clear. A divisive merger is a disposition of property and, hence, the Code says it’s a transfer, thereby triggering the opening prerequisite to there being a fraudulent transfer.

The Code says so. Plainly.

—

1: A recording of the hearing is embedded in the linked PDF, which PDF may need to be downloaded in order to access the recording; the relevant portion of the hearing begins around 20:15 in the recording.

2: See Curtis W. Huff, The New Texas Business Corporation Act Merger Provisions, 21 St. Mary’s L.J. 109, 122-25 (1989).

 

 

Estimating the Need for Additional Bankruptcy Judges in Light of the COVID-19 Pandemic
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Reform, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Benjamin Iverson (BYU Marriott School of Business), Jared A. Ellias (University of California, Hastings College of the Law), and Mark Roe (Harvard Law School)

Ben Iverson
Jared A. Ellias
Mark Roe

We recently estimated the bankruptcy system’s ability to absorb an anticipated surge of financial distress among American consumers, businesses, and municipalities as a result of COVID-19.

An increase in the unemployment rate has historically been a leading indicator of the volume of bankruptcy filings that occur months later.  If prior trends repeat this time, the May 2020 unemployment rate of 13.3% will lead to a substantial increase in all types of bankruptcy filings.  Mitigation, governmental assistance, the unique features of the COVID-19 pandemic, and judicial triage should reduce the potential volume of bankruptcies to some extent, or make it less difficult to handle, and it is plausible that the impact of the recent unemployment spike will be smaller than history would otherwise predict. We hope this will be so.  Yet, even assuming that the worst-case scenario could be averted, our analysis suggests substantial, temporary investments in the bankruptcy system may be needed.

Our model assumes that Congress would like to have enough bankruptcy judges such that the average judge would not be pressed to work more than was the case during the last bankruptcy peak in 2010, when the bankruptcy system was pressured and the public caseload figures indicate that judges worked 50 hour weeks on average.

To keep the judiciary’s workload at 2010 levels, we project that, in the worst-case scenario, the bankruptcy system could need as many as 246 temporary judges, a very large number. But even in our most optimistic model, the bankruptcy system will still need 50 additional temporary bankruptcy judgeships, as well as the continuation of all current temporary judgeships.

Our memorandum’s conclusions were endorsed by an interdisciplinary group of academics and forwarded to Congress.

Planning for an American Bankruptcy Epidemic
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Reform, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Ben Iverson (Brigham Young University), Mark Roe (Harvard Law School)

Ben Iverson
Mark Roe

The COVID-19 pandemic looks likely to cause a surge in bankruptcies in the United States—conceivably a surge as rapid and as substantial as the U.S. court system has ever experienced. A significant and rapid increase in judicial capacity to manage the flood of cases is more than appropriate, we argued in a recent op-ed.

Bankruptcy filings in the United States have historically peaked several months after a surge in unemployment. And American unemployment is now rising at an unprecedented rate, with more than 30 million claims filed in the last six weeks. If historical patterns hold, the bankruptcy surge would be on track to be the largest the American bankruptcy system has experienced.

Bankruptcy works well enough and quickly enough in normal times, particularly for restructuring large public firms. But it cannot work as well, and the economy will suffer, if the bankruptcy system is overloaded. Delays in critical vendor orders, DIP loan approvals, pre-packaged bankruptcy confirmations and the like could all slow commerce unnecessarily.

The full op-ed is available HERE.

Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Bankruptcy for Banks and Proposed Chapter 14
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Bankruptcy Reform, Financial Firms and Safe Harbors | 0

On November 13, 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “Big Bank Bankruptcy: 10 Years After Lehman Brothers,” in connection with the proposed “Taxpayer Protection and Responsible Resolution Act” (“TPRRA”). The TPRRA would add a new chapter 14 to the Bankruptcy Code, providing a recapitalization mechanism for bank holding companies or some other financial companies.

This version of chapter 14 would implement the “Single Point of Entry” financial company resolution model in bankruptcy. (The SPOE model contemplates that only a financial company’s top-level holding company would go into bankruptcy proceedings, with losses borne by its creditors, while material subsidiaries continue to operate as going concerns. For more, see here.) The bill contemplates a proceeding where the bank’s holding company would have a large amount of its long-term debt turned into equity over a 48 hour (likely weekend) period. The firm’s subsidiaries would continue to operate, but would be transferred over to a new, debt-free bridge company. The old holding company’s shareholders and creditors would have their claims handled through a bankruptcy process. The bill also included a 48 hour automatic stay on Qualified Financial Contracts (QFCs), but effectively requires their assumption by the new bridge company.

In his opening remarks, Senator Grassley noted that several similar bank bankruptcy proposals have been incorporated into bills introduced into both the Senate and House over the past several Congresses. (For Roundtable coverage of the 2016 and 2017 FIBA bills, click here, here, here, and here.) A principal difference, stressed by Senator Coons in his opening statement, was that the current bill would not affect Title II of the Dodd-Frank Act, as some prior provisions would have. The view that a special chapter 14 should complement, rather than replace the FDIC’s Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) is consistent with the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s report on OLA, recommending against its repeal, released earlier this year. (For Roundtable coverage of the OLA, click here and here.)

The Hearing featured testimony by Donald Bernstein (Davis Polk), Professor Mark Roe (Harvard Law School), and Stephen Hessler (Kirkland & Ellis).

Video and testimonies available here.

For previous Roundtable posts on the resolution of financial institutions, see Howell Jackson & Stephanie Massman, “The Resolution of Distressed Financial Conglomerates“; Stephen Lubben & Arthur Wilmarth, “Too Big and Unable to Fail“; Mark Roe’s “Don’t Bank on Bankruptcy”; Mark Roe & Stephen Adams, “Restructuring Failed Financial Firms in Bankruptcy: Selling Lehman’s Derivatives Portfolio”; David Skeel’s “Bankruptcy for Banks: A Tribute (and a Little Plea) for Jay Westbrook”; and, “Financial Scholars Submit Letter to Congress Opposing Repeal of Title II.”

(This post was authored by Ryan Rossner, J.D. ’19.)

Don’t Bank on Bankruptcy for Banks
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Financial Firms and Safe Harbors | 0

By Mark Roe (Harvard Law School)

In the next month, the US Treasury Department is expected to decide whether to seek to replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act’s regulator-led process for resolving failed mega-banks with a solely court-based mechanism. Such a change would be a mistake of potentially crisis-size proportions.

Yes, creating a more streamlined bankruptcy process can reduce the decibel level of a bank’s failure, and bankruptcy judges are experts at important restructuring tasks. But there are critical factors that cannot be ignored. Restructuring a mega-bank requires pre-planning, familiarity with the bank’s strengths and weaknesses, knowledge of how to time the bankruptcy properly in a volatile economy, and the capacity to coordinate with foreign regulators.

The courts cannot fulfill these tasks alone, especially in the time the proposal under consideration has allotted – a 48-hour weekend. Unable to plan ahead, the courts would enter into the restructuring process unfamiliar with the bank. Moreover, the courts cannot manage the kind of economy-wide crisis that would arise if multiple mega-banks sank simultaneously. And they cannot coordinate with foreign regulators.

The rest of the article is available here.

Recent Roundtable coverage of this subject includes a round-up of op-eds; a summary of a letter submitted to Congress by financial scholars; a summary of a White House memorandum calling for reconsideration of the OLA; and an analysis of recent legislative efforts to address bankruptcy for banks.

The Roundtable has also published commentary on the treatment of insolvent financial institutions; see Jackson & Massman, “The Resolution of Distressed Financial Conglomerates” and Lubben & Wilmarth, “Too Big and Unable to Fail.”

Roundup: Recent Op-Eds on Bankruptcy for Banks
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates, Financial Firms and Safe Harbors | 0

The House of Representatives’ passage first of the Financial Institution Bankruptcy Act (FIBA) and then of the Financial CHOICE Act last Thursday has made bankruptcy for banks and the fate of Dodd-Frank’s Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) a live issue again. Both FIBA and the CHOICE Act would add a “subchapter V” to chapter 11 to resolve financial conglomerates in bankruptcy. Unlike FIBA, however, the CHOICE Act would also repeal the OLA, leaving bankruptcy as the only option for handling the failure of a financial conglomerate.

Several academics, former regulators, and practitioners, including several contributors to the Bankruptcy Roundtable, have recently published op-eds weighing arguments for and against replacing the OLA with bankruptcy. Support for adding tools to the Bankruptcy Code is widespread. Commentators differ, however, on whether bankruptcy, by itself, can address the systemic risk concerns that prompted the creation of the OLA and on whether it would be useful to have a bankruptcy procedure more robust than subchapter V.

Stephen Lubben contends that without a mechanism for providing liquidity to financial institutions—the usual providers of funding for companies in chapter 11—the Bankruptcy Code cannot effectively handle a widespread financial crisis. Mark Roe emphasizes that economic stability requires having the OLA and related structures to allow subchapter V to succeed (through regulatory coordination with international authorities and supervision over financial institutions to ensure that they have the capital structures to facilitate a subchapter V resolution). The OLA is also needed in case a subchapter V reorganization fails, as subchapter V is not a general bankruptcy authorization but, instead, a mechanism to use the 48-hour “single-point-of-entry” restructuring strategy in bankruptcy. This point renews some of the arguments Roe and David Skeel expressed earlier on ways subchapter V should be strengthened, such as by the addition of a regulatory trigger and a means to deal with an inability to complete the resolution within 48 hours.

Finally, Sheila Bair and Paul Volcker argue that having the OLA as a backstop for a failed bankruptcy makes government bailouts less likely, as the OLA provides regulators with the tools to wind down a failed financial institution in an orderly fashion. In contrast, Stephen Hessler argues that the Bankruptcy Code, amended along the lines of subchapter V, would promote both market discipline and financial stability. A bankruptcy judge applying well established precedents and rules in a subchapter V case would combat moral hazard more effectively than the OLA, which grants regulators significant discretion to treat similarly situated creditors differently.

(By Rebecca Green, Harvard Law School, J.D. 2017.)

Recent Roundtable coverage of this subject includes posts on a letter submitted to Congress by academics and the Trump administration’s direction to the Treasury to issue a report on the OLA.

Financial Scholars Submit Letter to Congress Opposing Repeal of Title II
by | posted in: Financial Firms and Safe Harbors | 0

On May 23, bankruptcy and financial scholars submitted a letter to members of Congress opposing the Financial CHOICE Act’s proposed replacement of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Orderly Liquidation Authority (“OLA”) with a new subchapter of the Bankruptcy Code as the exclusive method for resolving failed financial institutions. Like the Financial Institution Bankruptcy Act (“FIBA”), which passed the House earlier this year, the CHOICE Act would add a subchapter V to chapter 11, amending the Bankruptcy Code to facilitate a single point of entry (“SPOE”) resolution strategy for financial institutions. Unlike FIBA, however, the CHOICE Act would also repeal the OLA, making subchapter V the only method for resolving a large, failed financial institution.

The letter noted that a bankruptcy proceeding could provide a useful addition to the financial crisis toolbox but expressed several concerns about FIBA’s capacity to deal effectively with an economy-wide financial crisis. For example, the bankruptcy court’s lack of familiarity with failed institutions could undermine the chances of success for the lightning-fast, 48-hour bankruptcy proceedings envisioned in proposed subchapter V. In contrast, in a proceeding under the OLA, the FDIC would have in-depth knowledge of the financial institution’s operations based on the “living wills” resolution planning process. Moreover, the SPOE resolution strategy at the heart of proposed subchapter V requires a specific kind of capital structure; regulators can verify that this structure is in place in advance, but the bankruptcy courts cannot. In addition, the letter voiced concerns about the lack of international coordination for a subchapter V proceeding, the absence of assured liquidity facilities in bankruptcy, and the general inability of bankruptcy courts to provide a coordinated response to the simultaneous failure of several financial institutions. Based on these weaknesses, the letter emphasized the need to retain the OLA as a backstop for resolving financial institutions in the event of a large-scale economic crisis, as well as the need to plan in advance for a subchapter V SPOE-style bankruptcy.

The letter also enumerated concerns specific to subchapter V itself as included in both FIBA and the Financial CHOICE Act. First, the letter pointed to FIBA’s weakness in giving financial institutions and their executives exclusive control over the initiation of the bankruptcy proceeding. Second, it noted that subchapter V does not provide a backup plan for a resolution that fails to be completed within 48 hours. Finally, it emphasized that existing limits on bankruptcy courts’ legal authority could result in challenges to any proceeding under subchapter V, potentially undermining its efficacy by creating uncertainty.

The full letter is available here.

(By Rebecca F. Green, Harvard Law School, J.D. 2017.)

For previous posts on this topic, see “White House Releases Memorandum on Orderly Liquidation Authority“; Jackson & Massman, “The Resolution of Distressed Financial Conglomerates“; and “Bankruptcy Code Amendments Pass the House in Appropriations Bill.”

Three Ages of Bankruptcy
by | posted in: Workouts and Pre-Packs | 0

By Mark J. Roe (Harvard Law School)

During the past century, three decisionmaking systems have arisen to accomplish a bankruptcy restructuring — judicial administration, a deal among the firm’s dominant players, and a sale of the firm’s operations in their entirety. Each is embedded in the Bankruptcy Code today, with all having been in play for more than a century and with each having had its heyday — its dominant age. The shifts, rises, and falls among decisionmaking systems have previously been explained by successful evolution in bankruptcy thinking, by the happenstance of the interests and views of lawyers that designed bankruptcy changes, and by the interests of those who influenced decisionmakers. Here I argue that these broad changes also stem from baseline market capacities, which shifted greatly over the past century; I build the case for shifts underlying market conditions being a major explanation for the shifts in decisionmaking modes. Keeping these three alternative decisionmaking types clearly in mind not only leads to better understanding of what bankruptcy can and cannot do, but also facilitates stronger policy decisions today here and in the world’s differing bankruptcy systems, as some tasks are best left to the market, others are best handled by the courts, and still others can be left to the inside parties to resolve.

The full article is available here.

The Trust Indenture Act of 1939 in Congress and the Courts in 2016: Bringing the SEC to the Table
by | posted in: Workouts and Pre-Packs | 0

By Mark J. Roe, Harvard Law School

The Trust Indenture Act’s ban on restructuring payment terms via a vote has come to the fore in recent litigation. This memo examines broad aspects of the recent controversies to outline a path forward for a sensible legal structure governing out-of-bankruptcy restructurings.

There are four points to be made:

  1. The recent Southern District of New York decisions striking down exit consent transactions are justified under the Trust Indenture Act.
  2. The Act impedes out-of-bankruptcy restructurings because it clearly but mistakenly bars votes that restructure bond payment terms. Restructurings outside bankruptcy cannot succeed when widespread consent is needed. But in an institutionalized bond market, there is little reason to bar restructuring by vote.
  3. The Act’s ban on votes creates the potential for holdouts (or earnest dissenters) to destroy a good deal that most bondholders sincerely want. But to combat the Act’s voting ban (and sometimes to force an unsound restructuring), issuers use exit consent offers, which can impair bondholders’ indenture rights so severely that they reluctantly accept an offer whose terms they dislike. Courts cannot resolve both of these distortions; other lawmakers need to come to the table.
  4. Legislative solutions are possible. While awaiting wise legislation, there is another way to construct sensible rules for bond workouts — one that has previously not been recognized. The Securities and Exchange Commission has broad authority to exempt indentures and transactions from the full force of the ban on voting.

SEC exemptive rulemaking provides a viable path to facilitate out-of-bankruptcy restructurings of public bond issues going forward. The appellate courts can and should affirm the lower court decisions that the Trust Indenture Act bans exit consent degradation, and the SEC can and should then use its exemptive power to carve out uncoerced votes on payment terms from the Act’s voting ban.

The full memo is available here.

For some of our most recent previous posts on the Trust Indenture Act see here, here, and here.

Breaking Bankruptcy Priority: How Rent-Seeking Upends the Creditors’ Bargain
by | posted in: Cramdown and Priority | 0

Editor’s Note:  Breaking Bankruptcy Priority: How Rent-Seeking Upends the Creditors’ Bargain, by Mark Roe and Fred Tung, was selected as one of the ten Best Corporate and Securities Articles of 2014. This “10-best” list reflects the choices of academic teachers in this area from more than 560 articles published last year. The article was the subject of a Bankruptcy Roundtable post on April 8, 2014 at its time of publication. It was the only bankruptcy-based article on the “10-best” list. That list can be found here.

By Mark Roe, Harvard Law School, and Frederick Tung, Boston University School of Law

Roe 124tungprofileIn “Breaking Bankruptcy Priority:  How Rent-Seeking Upends the Creditors’ Bargain,” recently published in the Virginia Law Review, we question the stability of bankruptcy’s priority structure. Bankruptcy scholarship has long conceptualized bankruptcy’s reallocation of value as a hypothetical bargain among creditors: creditors agree in advance that if the firm falters, value will be reallocated according to a fixed set of statutory and agreed-to contractual priorities.

In “Breaking Priority,” we propose an alternative view. No hypothetical bargain among creditors is ever fully fixed because creditors continually seek to alter the priority rules, pursuing categorical rule changes to jump ahead of competing creditors. These moves are often successful, so creditors must continually adjust to other creditors’ successful jumps. Because priority is always up for grabs, bankruptcy should be reconceptualized as an ongoing rent-seeking contest, fought in a three-ring arena of transactional innovation, doctrinal change, and legislative trumps.

We highlight a number of recent and historical priority jumps. We explain how priority jumping interacts with finance theory and how it should lead us to view bankruptcy as a dynamic process. Breaking priority, reestablishing it, and adapting to new priorities is part of the normal science of Chapter 11 reorganization, where bankruptcy lawyers and judges expend a large part of their time and energy. While a given jump’s end-state (when a new priority is firmly established) may sometimes be efficient, bankruptcy rent-seeking overall has significant pathologies and inefficiencies.

The paper is available here.

1 2