No CLE

This panel of local bankruptcy judges will address what works and what doesn’t work in both written and oral advocacy. Thus, whether you are a new lawyer just starting out or a seasoned litigator looking to hone your skills, this session is for you.

Conflicting ethics and professionalism under different jurisdictions; required disclosures; duties to the various courts; duties to your client; different fiduciary duties; the ethics of insolvency planning and COMI-shifting.

“So, a lawyer, a judge, and two ABI Presidents walk into a bar….” This panel on professionalism will be designed as a roundtable discussion on professional conduct within the world of bankruptcy. The panelists will discuss ABI’s Principles of Civility and engage the audience in a thoughtful discussion about managing professional relationships with clients, opposing counsel/parties, and the court.

This panel will focus on planning and drafting agreements, best practices, avoiding common pitfalls, and successful strategies and approaches.

This panel will present practical pointers for addressing real estate issues in bankruptcy: relief from the automatic stay, unexpired leases, valuation, interest rates, § 1111(b) elections and other useful topics.

This panel will discuss the increasingly prevalent use of receiverships under state and federal law by lenders to distressed companies as an alternative to bankruptcy. But the two schemes are not mutually exclusive, and sometimes they collide. The panel will explore the various legal and practical differences, benefits and disadvantages of receiverships vs. bankruptcy, and issues that arise when the two meet.

Foreign representatives have begun using chapter 15 more creatively in seeking a broad array of relief; consequently, parties in the U.S. have increasingly been raising a number of challenges. In 2014, foreign representatives were presented with a number of objections to chapter 15 relief, including objections questioning the proper location of the foreign debtor’s center of main interests and the fairness of proceedings before the foreign court. This panel will discuss cases that address these issues, including In re Octaviar Admin. Pty Ltd., In re Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. and In re Rede Energia, S.A., and the steps the foreign representatives in those cases took to maximize their likelihood of obtaining relief in the U.S. The panel will also discuss whether chapter 15 recognition is a prerequisite to seeking relief in a U.S. court, and will analyze the split of authority on that issue.

Cramdown interest rate (Momentive); extent of security interest (ResCap); credit-bidding (Fisker, Free Lance-Star Publishing); date of collateral valuation. Will Till and Momentive change future bankruptcies? How will pre-bankruptcy and DIP financing change? What new or different issues will arise at the beginnings and endings of cases? Will contested confirmation become the norm? Will secured lenders be less willing to support a bankruptcy process? Will include discussion of changes proposed in the ABI Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11’s Final Report relating to secured creditor rights.