Business

All types of hospitals — from acute care to highly specialized — are experiencing financial challenges. This is especially true for rural and nonprofit hospitals, which often rely heavily on slower and lower payments from Medicare and Medicaid. Often the best (or only) solution for a distressed hospital is a sale to a larger hospital operator or system. This panel will examine the unique challenges facing buyers and sellers in connection with such distressed hospital sales.

The restaurant industry, particularly the fast food and fast casual sectors, is under pressure from rising food and labor costs, the changing dining habits of millennials, and decreased foot traffic at retail shopping centers. This panel will examine those trends and explore potential strategies to maximize enterprise value, both in and out of bankruptcy court.

This panel will discuss strategies and key topics involving the restructuring or liquidation of retail operations. The panelists will address landlord issues and claims, as well as the interplay of §§ 363 and 365, among numerous related matters.

This panel will provide an overview of rights offerings and issues that frequently arise, including limitations under the securities laws as to which creditors can participate, what happens to those creditors who cannot participate, what is a backstop party, who has the right to participate in the backstop, how backstop parties are compensated, and the limitations on the use of § 1145 in connection with rights offerings and any securities subscribed for in rights offerings.

This panel will cover unique bankruptcy issues affecting unincorporated debtors, including general and limited partnerships, limited liability companies and trusts. Beginning with issues of eligibility and authorization to file a petition, the panelists will cover questions that arise throughout the life of a bankruptcy case, including executory contracts, fiduciary-duty disputes, sales and pledges of ownership interests, and control over these noncorporate entities.

This panel will discuss how case law since Lehman has both narrowed and expanded the various safe harbor provisions contained in the Bankruptcy Code.

This panel will address the selection and use of expert witnesses, including tips on how to select an expert, how to prepare an expert and what a judge might find most useful.

In a riff on the popular television show “Shark Tank,” bankruptcy practitioners will pitch a panel of judicial “sharks” for requested modifications to recent Supreme Court/circuit-level decisions and timely bankruptcy issues.

Hosted by the Mediation and the Unsecured Trade Creditors Committees Formatted largely as a mock mediation session, this interactive panel will demonstrate best practices to prepare for, participate in, and successfully conclude a mediation session. Topics will include pre-mediation written submissions, preparing clients (and oneself) for a mediation session, managing the mediator and the client once the session begins, strategies for guiding a mediation session to a successful resolution, and tips for breaking an impasse.