2025 New York City Bankruptcy Conference

This panel will discuss current topics and challenges facing boards and other fiduciaries of distressed companies. The panelists will explore risks, pitfalls and best practices for directors, boards and their counsel/advisors in a variety of contexts with unique challenges, including liability management exercises (LMEs) and other distressed corporate transactions, wholly owned insolvent subsidiaries, and dual fiduciary issues in private-equity sponsor companies. The panelists also will discuss key post-Quandrant trends and legal developments, as well as the potential impact of recent Delaware General Corporation Law (DGCL) amendments.

This session will explore the causes, consequences and restructuring trends inherent in health care and retail bankruptcies, with a focus on private-equity involvement, regulatory challenges and operational missteps. The panelists will highlight potential cross-industry themes and relevant case studies.

This panel will consider the impact of President Trump’s policies on corporate restructurings and strategies for advising clients in light of those policies. Specifically, the panelists will analyze executive actions on tariffs, immigration, deregulation and taxes, among others, as well as the impacts of those actions on financings and the distressed investing market. It will discuss whether the potential disruptions resulting from those policies are analogous to past economic disruptions, or whether they are unique.

This panel will explore the ways in which companies are increasingly using creative liability-management transactions — such as drop-downs, uptiers and double-dip structures — to restructure debt, often to the detriment of certain creditors. The panelists will outline legal and structural mechanics behind these transactions, illustrate real-world case studies (e.g., J. Crew, Serta, STG), and discuss the evolving litigation landscape and protective covenant strategies.

This session will examine current developments in chapter 11 professional ethics, including recent court decisions and best practices in disclosure for retained professionals. The panelists will discuss these issues in the context of certain factual hypotheticals intended to explore current case developments and the outer boundaries of chapter 11 disclosure and ethics rules and practice, including relating to the use of artificial intelligence technology in litigation.

Corporate restructuring has recently experienced a significant transformation. Traditional business “rehabilitations” (sweeping and lengthy chapter 11 proceedings) have become truncated, and “pre-arranged” cases often follow a strategic liability-management exercise (LME). Jurisprudence that had long constrained debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing (e.g., the sub rosa plan doctrine) has seemingly lost its importance. In many cases, the creditors' committee — as well as the bankruptcy court — are boxed into restructuring support agreement (RSA) terms that are, in turn, embedded into DIP covenants, and those covenants often compel a particular (rightful or wrongful) case outcome. This panel will evaluate whether chapter 11 still reliably delivers on its legislative purpose.

This panel will discuss the scope and impact of the Purdue decision on third-party releases, recent standards and approaches bankruptcy courts have used when considering consent, emerging mechanisms for (and alternatives to) third-party releases in chapter 11 plans, and shifts in attitude and strategies in the post-Purdue landscape, including the use of chapter 15 recognition.

This panel will explore key bankruptcy litigation issues that are currently the subject of significant interest and debate, including (1) how bankruptcy courts address gerrymandering in the classification context, and how such concerns may arise in connection with liability-management transactions; (2) how debtors may attempt to effect "backdoor" estate releases through sale transactions whereby the buyer of the assets acquires estate claims and causes of action, and whether such attempts invoke concerns of a sub rosa plan; and (3) how the standard of adequate protection should be interpreted when a debtor is using cash collateral to maintain operations as a going concern where the alternative is a potentially value-destructive chapter 7. The panelists also plan to address the jurisdictional split regarding whether the confirmation requirement of an impaired accepting class requires a "per plan" or a "per debtor" approach for multi-debtor plans.

This panel will discuss the features that make chapter 11 world-renowned, and will analyze the similar features that have been incorporated into the (often newly enacted) restructuring regimes of foreign countries. The panelists will then examine certain of these regimes to explain why some regimes have used these similar features more successfully than others. Will chapter 11 continue to be the leading restructuring format in the world? Join us and find out!

This panel will provide an update on mass torts and will discuss insurer issues and equitable mootness (Serta), including the exculpation and unequal treatment of creditors under § 1123(a)(4).