Government Activism in Bankruptcy
by | posted in: Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy Roundtable Updates | 0

By Jared A. Ellias (Bion M. Gregory Chair in Business Law and Professor of Law, UC Hastings College of Law) and George Triantis (Professor of Law and Business, Stanford Law School)

Jared A. Ellias
George Triantis

It is widely recognized that bankruptcy law can stymie regulatory enforcement and present challenges for governments when regulated businesses file for Chapter 11.  It is less-widely understood that bankruptcy law can present governments with opportunities to advance policy goals if they are willing to adopt tactics traditionally associated with activist investors, a strategy we call “government bankruptcy activism.”  The bankruptcy filings by Chrysler and General Motors in 2009 are a famous example: the government of the United States used the bankruptcy process to help both auto manufacturers resolve their financial distress while promoting the policy objectives of protecting union workers and addressing climate change.  A decade later, the government of California applied its bargaining power and used an innovative state law in the Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s Chapter 11 case to protect climate policies and the victims of wildfires.  These examples illustrate that, by tapping into the bankruptcy system, governments gain access to the exceptional powers that a debtor enjoys under bankruptcy law, which can complement the traditional tools of appropriations and regulation to facilitate and accelerate policy outcomes.  This strategy is especially useful in times of urgency and policy paralysis, when government bankruptcy activism can provide a pathway past veto players in the political system.  However, making policy through the bankruptcy system presents potential downsides as well, as it may also allow governments to evade democratic accountability and obscure the financial losses that stakeholders are forced to absorb to help fund those policy outcomes.

The full article is available here.

Consumer Response to Chapter 11 Bankruptcy: Negative Demand Spillover to Competitors
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Valuation | 0

By O. Cem Ozturk (Georgia Institute of Technology – Scheller College of Business), Pradeep K. Chintagunta (University of Chicago), & Sriram Venkataraman (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – Kenan-Flagler Business School)

We empirically study the effect of Chrysler’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing on the quantity sold by its competitors in the U.S. auto industry. The demand for competitors could increase as they may benefit from the distress of the bankrupt firm (competitive effect). On the other hand, competitors could experience lower sales if the bankruptcy increases consumer uncertainty about their own viability (contagion effect). A challenge to measuring the impact of bankruptcies is the coincident decline in economic conditions stemming from the Great Recession and the potential effect of the “cash for clunkers” program. To identify the effect of the bankruptcy filing, we employ a regression-discontinuity-in-time design based on a temporal discontinuity in treatment (i.e., bankruptcy filing), along with an extensive set of control variables. Such a design is facilitated by a unique data set at the dealer-model-day level which allows us to compare changes in unit sales in close temporal vicinity of the filing. We find that unit sales for an average competitor reduce by 28% following Chrysler’s bankruptcy filing.

Our results suggest that this negative demand spillover effect is driven by a heightened consumer uncertainty about the viability of the bankrupt firm’s rivals. For example, we show that the sales of competitors’ vehicles that compete within the same segments as the bankrupt firm’s vehicles or that provide lower value for money are affected more negatively in response to the Chrysler filing. We also observe more web search activity for Chrysler’s competitors after the filing.

The full article can be found here.

From Chrysler and General Motors to Detroit
by | posted in: Cramdown and Priority, Municipal Bankruptcy | 0

By David A. Skeel, Jr., University of Pennsylvania Law School

dskeel

In the past five years, three of the most remarkable bankruptcy cases in American history have come out of Detroit: the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009, and of Detroit itself in 2013. The principal objective of this Article is simply to show that the Grand Bargain at the heart of the Detroit bankruptcy is the direct offspring of the bankruptcy sale transactions that were used to restructure Chrysler and GM. The proponents of Detroit’s “Grand Bargain” never would have dreamed up the transaction were it not for the federal government-engineered carmaker bankruptcies. The Article’s second objective, based the comparison of the Detroit cases, is to make a very brief case for reform of bankruptcy sales.

Part I of the Article briefly surveys the increased use of bankruptcy sales and related shifts in Chapter 11 practice over the past several decades. Part II describes the Chrysler and General Motors bankruptcies, which built on but radically expanded the scope of a bankruptcy sale. Part III turns to the Detroit bankruptcy, focusing primarily on the “Grand Bargain,” while also exploring the city’s use of another recent bankruptcy strategy, known as “gifting.” The Article concludes, in a brief final part, that the Detroit cases have pushed recent bankruptcy innovations to their logical extremes — and beyond — exposing the need to update the oversight of bankruptcy sales.

The full version of this article is available here.

 

Bankruptcy and Economic Recovery
by | posted in: Bankruptcy Administration and Jurisdiction, Workouts and Pre-Packs | 0

Authors: Thomas Jackson & David Skeel

A striking feature of the recent economic crisis was the long period of subpar economic growth that continued even after the crisis had officially ended.  Although discussion about how to spur economic recovery has focused on the efficacy of Keynesian stimulus spending, this is only one of many factors that might plausibly encourage growth.  For a book entitled “Financial Restructuring to Sustain Recovery,” published by the Brookings Institution, we were asked to discuss the role that bankruptcy policy plays, or might play, in economic recovery.

After summarizing how bankruptcy posits a collective solution to a common pool problem of individual creditors and thereby improves the efficient use of assets, we consider two obstacles to its effectiveness.  The first is that bankruptcy proceedings often seem to begin too late.  The increased influence of debtors’ principal lenders probably counteracts this problem in part, but we suspect not fully.  We consider a wide range of strategies that lawmakers might use to encourage timely filing, some of which are fairly simple, while others are more speculative.

The second major issue is the relationship between bankruptcy and jobs.  The question whether bankruptcy should be used to protect jobs is a recurring theme that came to the fore most recently when the government used bankruptcy to bail out Chrysler, justifying its intervention as preserving jobs.  We caution that distorting the standard bankruptcy rules—focused on efficient use of assets—to save jobs in the short run may have more problematic effects overall.

The full-length article can be found here.