Statutory Erosion of Secured Creditors’ Rights: Some Insights from the United Kingdom
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Cramdown and Priority | 0

By Adrian Walters, IIT Chicago-Kent School of Law

The prevailing wisdom is that Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings have been captured by secured creditors with the consequence that many Chapter 11s are little more than glorified nationwide federal foreclosures through which secured creditors exit by means of a section 363 sale.  Some scholars worry that secured creditor capture of Chapter 11 leads to asset deployment decisions that do not produce welfare-maximizing outcomes for creditors as a whole.

In an article forthcoming in the 2015 University of Illinois Law Review, I do not question this prevailing wisdom.  Instead, I seek to argue, by reference to experience in the United Kingdom, that if we are serious about curbing secured creditors’ control of bankruptcy proceedings through bankruptcy law reform, we have to acknowledge and understand the ways in which secured creditors respond to reforms that are adverse to their interests.

The article identifies four ways in which lenders may be expected to adjust to “adverse” bankruptcy reform: (i) meta bargaining; (ii) adjustments to pre-bankruptcy behaviour; (iii) transactional innovation; and (iv) shape shifting. The article then illustrates how lenders in England and Wales have successfully adjusted to sustained statutory attempts to undermine their bankruptcy priority by carving value out of their collateral, and to erode their control rights by abolishing their right to appoint an administrative receiver over floating charge collateral.

Click here to read more.

Overview of ABI Commission Report and Recommendation on the Reform of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Jay M. Goffman, George N. Panagakis, Ken Ziman, Van C. Durrer II, John K. Lyons, Mark A. McDermott, and David M. Turetsky of Skadden, Arps Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP

The American Bankruptcy Institute’s Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11 recently released its Final Report recommending comprehensive reforms to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code. The report is the culmination of a three-year effort by over 200 restructuring professionals to evaluate Chapter 11 in light of the changing environment in which financially distressed companies operate. The Report is approximately 400 pages long. Skadden, Arps has prepared a comprehensive overview of the Report that condenses the salient points into a 30-page summary which can be found here. Selected recommendations for reform include:

  • DIP financing orders cannot impose milestones requiring the debtor to perform material tasks within the first 60 days (e.g., conduct a sale or file a plan).
  • No 363 sales of all or substantially all assets (“363x sales”) within the first 60 days unless the debtor demonstrates a high likelihood that the value of the debtor’s assets will decrease significantly.
  • 363 sales must satisfy requirements similar to plan confirmation requirements.
  • Junior, out-of-the-money stakeholders may be entitled to receive an allocation of value from senior creditors to reflect a possible upswing in the reorganized debtor’s value.
  • The cost of capital for similar debt issued to companies comparable to the debtor as a reorganized entity should be used when determining the appropriate discount rate for purposes of cram down.
  • Eliminating the requirement of at least one impaired accepting class of creditors for plan confirmation.
  • No appointment of an unsecured creditors’ committee if general unsecured creditors do not need representation in the case (e.g., if their claims are out-of-the-money).

Venue Roundtable in WSJ Bankruptcy Beat
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

Venue in Chapter 11 cases has been a hot topic, particularly after a recent venue battle in Caesar’s and the ABI Commission declined to recommend changing existing law, which gives debtors a broad choice for venue. Do current venue laws afford debtors, influential creditors, and their advisors too much leeway in electing where to file? And if so, should venue law be reformed? Last week, over a dozen bankruptcy professionals offered their views in the Wall Street Journal’s “Examiners” panel.

There was near-consensus among the WSJ’s Examiners that existing venue law—while perhaps imperfect—works well.

Anders Maxwell and Sharon Levine claimed, as did several others, that the large volume of filings in Delaware and the Southern District of New York renders those districts more efficient. Levine explained that “[t]he large volume of cases adjudicated within these two districts encourages further filings which in turn gives these courts even more of a track record, predictability and specialization.” Jack Butler argued that broad venue choice is a boon, since “[i]t creates opportunities for jointly-administered, cost-efficient filings, allowing fiduciaries to exercise their business judgment about what filing location might maximize enterprise value or reduce execution risk or both.” Moreover, “parties-in-interest actually seek to transfer venue in [only] a fraction of the cases filed.”

Companies also must consider “legal differences within the circuits” in deciding where to file, according to Richard Chesley. Differences in law, he explained, “can spell the difference between a confirmable plan of reorganization and liquidation.” Mark Roe judged that although the debtor might choose to file where it would be favored, that concern is offset by the expertise that courts hearing and deciding large, complex cases develop through repetition and experience. Venue restrictions that would disperse big firm filings would fail to capitalize on this expertise and experience. If more uniformity were needed, Roe argues, a nationwide intermediate appellate court would be the best approach.

The most vocal opponent of wide venue choice, Lynn LoPucki, wrote in his 2005 book, Courting Failure, that venue law degrades the bankruptcy courts, because the courts compete for large, prestigious cases by (i) advancing favorable precedent to attract debtors and (ii) tolerating high fees to curry favor with restructuring professionals, who influence where the case will be filed. This leads to a detrimental “race-to-the-bottom” style of “forum shopping,” which, he argues, facilitates the disproportionately large percentage of filings in Delaware and the Southern District of New York.

Visit the WSJ’s Bankruptcy Beat website to read the rest of the Examiners’ views on modern venue law.

This post was written by Aaron David (J.D. ’15).

Venue Reform Can Save Companies
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By Lynn LoPucki, Security Pacific Bank Distinguished Professor of  Law at UCLA Law School
LoPucki imgOne side in litigation should not pick the court. That is exactly what happens, however, in big bankruptcies. A debtor, perhaps working together with its largest lender, can choose virtually any court in the country. The thousands of other stakeholders have no say.

The current system’s defenders argue that venue transfers will protect the stakeholders in appropriate cases. But in big case bankruptcy, venue transfer is illusory. Over the past ten years, 209 of the 317 large, public company Chapter 11s filed in the United States (66%) were filed in Wilmington, Delaware or New York City. One hundred eighty-six of the 209 (89%) were headquartered in some other district or division, but the Delaware and New York courts retained 206 of the 209 (99%).

Because cases have flowed to Delaware and New York since the 1990s, those courts’ judges now have high levels of big-case experience. In a recently completed study, Joseph Doherty and I found that significantly more companies survive under judges with greater big-case experience.

That doesn’t justify or necessitate letting corporate managers and DIP lenders pick their courts. The venue rules should require a big bankrupt to file with a big-case panel designated for its headquarters region. Within each of three or four regions, a chief judge could assign cases to maximize the development and utilization of big-case experience. That could eliminate forum shopping, level the playing field for stakeholders, reduce the pressure on judges to attract cases, and save more companies and jobs.

The Bankruptcy Clause, the Fifth Amendment, and the Limited Rights of Secured Creditors in Bankruptcy
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By Charles J. Tabb, University of Illinois College of Law

2005-tabb The received wisdom in bankruptcy jurisprudence is that the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause independently limits the exercise of the bankruptcy power under the Bankruptcy Clause. Accordingly, secured creditors in bankruptcy are assumed to enjoy a constitutional right to receive the full value of their collateral in the bankruptcy case.

The thesis of this article is that the received wisdom is wrong. Professor Tabb argues that the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not and should not constrain the powers of Congress to modify the substantive rights of secured creditors under the Bankruptcy Clause. Instead, the only meaningful limits on the modification of substantive rights of stakeholders pursuant to the bankruptcy power are those that inhere in the Bankruptcy Clause itself.

The Bankruptcy Clause has only two limitations, both of which are extremely easy to satisfy regarding the treatment of secured creditors: that the law be “uniform,” and “on the subject of bankruptcies.”

The article first explains why it matters whether we continue to subscribe to the received wisdom that the Takings Clause limits what can be done to secured creditors in bankruptcy. Then it examines in considerable detail the historical evolution of bankruptcy jurisprudence in this area. Finally, the article assesses how we might best strike a prudential and meaningful constitutional balance.

To read the full article, click here.

Bankruptcy Survival
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Lynn M. LoPucki and Joseph W. Doherty, UCLA School of Law

lopuckidoherty Of the large, public companies that seek to remain in business through bankruptcy reorganization, only 70% succeed.  The assets of the other 30% are absorbed into other businesses.  Survival is important both because it is efficient and because it preserves jobs, communities, supplier and customer relationships, and tax revenues.  This Article reports the findings of the first comprehensive study of who survives.  Eleven conditions best predict survival.  All are concurrently statistically significant in our best regression model. 1. A company that even hints in the press release announcing its bankruptcy that it intends to sell its business is much more likely to fail. 2. Companies whose cases are assigned to more experienced judges are more likely to survive. 3. Companies headquartered in isolated geographical areas are more likely to fail. 4. Companies that file with higher leverage are more likely to survive. 5. If a creditor’s committee is routinely appointed, the company is more likely to fail. 6. Companies with DIP loans are more likely to survive. 7. Companies that prepackage or prenegotiate their plans are more likely to survive. 8. Companies are more likely to survive if pre-filing interest rates are low. 9. Larger companies are more likely to succeed if they are larger. 10. Manufacturers are more likely to survive. 11. Companies with positive pre-filing operating income are more likely to survive. System participants can improve survival rates by shifting cases to more experienced judges and perhaps also by greater attention to the decisions to appoint committees, prenegotiate plans, obtain DIP loans, and publicly seek alliances. The article is forthcoming in the UCLA Law Review, May, 2015. Click here to read further.

Seventh Circuit Warns Intervenors Not to Sleep on Their Rights
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Eric G. Pearson, Foley & Lardner LLP
09794It’s an ancient principle of equity, drawn from Roman law: Equity relieves the vigilant, not those who sleep upon their rights. And it sums up quite well the Seventh Circuit’s recent decision in SEC v. First Choice Management Services, Nos. 14-1270 & 14-2284 (Sept. 11, 2014). First Choice did not involve equity (or even cite the maxim); it concerned an untimely motion to intervene. But the principle was the same, and it’s a good lesson for potential intervenors.

The court, in an opinion written by Judge Posner, affirmed the district court’s denial of a motion to intervene as untimely in a receivership proceeding. The intervenor knew that the receiver proposed to sell the property to which the intervenor had an adverse claim six months before seeking to intervene and had even been involved for over a decade in what the court described as “protracted negotiations” with the receiver to reclaim the property. But the intervenor never was a litigant and, the court held, “had no possible excuse for waiting for six months after [learning of the receiver’s adverse claim] before moving to intervene.” Instead, it had “wait[ed] till the last minute to try to throw a monkey wrench into the deal.”

The Seventh Circuit was unwilling to brook that sort of “dawdling,” which created only more work for the receiver, purchaser, and district court. It affirmed the denial of the motion and dismissed an independent appeal challenging the sale order. Please see a full copy of this article here.

The Agglomeration of Bankruptcy
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, Anna Milanez, & Vladimir Mukharlyamov

In “The Agglomeration of Bankruptcy,” Professor Benmelech and his coauthors examine the spread of bankruptcy by analyzing the ways in which bankrupt firms impose costs on nearby non-bankrupt competitors. The authors argue that the normally positive economies of agglomeration created by stores in close proximity to one another can become detrimental during downturns. When a store is in distress, proximity works to amplify the negative effects of distress. The result is that retail stores in distress impose costs, such as decreasing sales, on nearby peers, which can ultimately lead to store closures and ultimately bankruptcy.

The authors use a novel and detailed dataset of all national chain store locations and closures across the United States from 2005 to 2010. The authors show that stores located in proximity to those of national chains that are liquidated are more likely to close themselves. Importantly, this effect is stronger for stores in the same industry as the liquidating national chain as compared to stores in industries different from that of the liquidating chain. Further, the geographical effect of store closures on neighboring stores is more pronounced in financially weaker firms.

For the full article, navigate here.

This summary was drafted by Robert Niles (J.D./M.B.A. ’16)

——
The HLS Bankruptcy Roundtable will be off-line for the holidays. We will be back in January.

The Duty to Maximize Value of an Insolvent Enterprise
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Brad Eric Scheler, Steven Epstein, Robert C. Schwenkel, and Gail Weinsten of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP

In the recent Delaware Chancery Court decision of Quadrant Structured Products Company, Ltd. v. Vertin (October 1, 2014), the Court clarified its approach to breach of fiduciary duty derivative actions brought by creditors against the directors of an insolvent corporation. Importantly, the Court applied business judgment rule deference to the non-independent directors’ decision to try to increase the value of the insolvent corporation by adopting a highly risky investment strategy—even though the creditors bore the full risk of the strategy’s failing, while the corporation’s sole stockholder would benefit if the strategy succeeded. By contrast, the court viewed the directors’ decisions not to exercise their right to defer interest on the notes held by the controller and to pay above-market fees to an affiliate of the controller as having been “transfers of value” from the insolvent corporation to the controller, which were subject to entire fairness review.

This decision appears to stand for the proposition that, under all but the most egregious circumstances, the business judgment rule will apply to directors’ decisions that relate to efforts to maximize the value of an insolvent corporation. Thus, even decisions made by a non-independent board for a high-risk business plan that favors the sole equity holder over the creditors, as in Quadrant, will be subject to business judgment deference. The court also distinguished decisions involving direct transfers of value from the insolvent corporation to the controller, holding that these decisions would be subject to entire fairness review because the controller stood on both sides of such transactions.

See here for a more detailed discussion of this case.

Court of Appeals Vacates DIP Financing Order for Lender’s Lack of Good Faith
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction | 0

By Michael L. Cook, Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP

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The Bankruptcy Code encourages lenders to make debtor-in-possession (“DIP”) loans to Chapter 11 debtors. Because of Bankruptcy Code § 364(e), an appeal from a financing order will ordinarily be moot when the lender acted “in good faith” unless the appellant obtains a stay pending appeal.  It is hence noteworthy when appellate courts overturn DIP financing orders that were not stayed pending the appeal.

The Fifth Circuit, on September 3, 2014, vacated five bankruptcy court and district court 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 to authorize a lien on third party collateral subject to disputed ownership claims.   In re TMT Procurement Corp., 2014 WL 4364894 (5th Cir. Sept. 3, 2014).  On October 23, 2014 the Fifth Circuit denied the petition for panel rehearing.

The Fifth Circuit rejected the debtors’ argument that the appeals were moot because of the lower courts’ repeated findings that the lender had made the loan in good faith.  TMT provides a new test regarding the Code’s “good faith” requirement for lenders, based on the lender’s knowledge of possible insider manipulation of the bankruptcy process.  The court also found a lack of subject matter jurisdiction because the debtors’ insiders used the bankruptcy financing process to “interfere with” unrelated state court litigation against the debtors’ controlling shareholder.

The full version of the article was recently published in The Bankruptcy Strategist. It is available online here.

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