Business

Recent court decisions will impact future commercial restructuring. The panel will provide an overview of the four most pressing issues in commercial restructuring over the past year, including debt recharacterization, third party releases, cram down interest rates, and rights of dissenting bondholders in out of court workouts. In each instance, our expert panelists will provide an overview of the issue at hand, recent case law developments, and considerations of their impact on future restructurings.

This session will cover a number of recent confirmation hot topics, including refinancing of secured loans in bankruptcy (BOKF NA v. Momentive Performance Materials Inc..); rights offerings and unfair discrimination (In re TCI 2 Holdings LLC); substantive consolidation with nondebtors (In re Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis); and per plan, not per debtor, confirmation (In the Matter of Transwest Resort Properties Inc.).

This panel will address various ethical issues including conflicts, chapter 7 bundling and payment arrangements, and chapter 11 retention and fee applications. Learn how to identify potential conflicts, and discover strategies to deal with them. The panel will also discuss the negotiation of fee agreements before and the application for payment of fees during bankruptcy cases.

There has been an increasing trend toward using creative structures to transact around limitations in debt documents in order to raise debt, sell assets and/or distribute value to certain stakeholders, including transferring assets to unrestricted subsidiaries, sale/leaseback transactions and FILO loan structures. Take a look into the resulting litigation surrounding these transactions (e.g., Windstream, iHeart, J.Crew) and discuss how the credit default swap market is affecting financing structures.

This session will explore the following questions: Should all similarly situated creditors have the right to participate in rights offerings, financings, etc.? Does it violate Bankruptcy Code provisions or policy to allow a subset of creditors to receive fees and increase their recovery at the expense of similarly situated creditors? Is mandatory market-testing a viable solution?

In this session, the panel will delve into recent chapter 15 decisions and the use of cross-border protocols in complex multijurisdictional cases ( e.g., SDNY General Order M-511, Delaware LBR 9029-2). Learn about preparing a cross-border case and cash-management issues across cross-border estates, difficulties that arise when dealing with foreign boards, subsidiaries in foreign jurisdictions and limited resources to manage the complications, and the winding down and liquidation of cross-border estates.

This panel of experienced professionals will discuss and analyze what it takes to maximize results for unsecured creditors in today’s chapter 11 cases.

This panel will explore current topics of interest involving third-party releases, including issues regarding: "deemed consent" of releasing parties; the scope of third-party releases; and the impact of jurisdictional or constitutional limits on bankruptcy courts to approve non-consensual third-party releases.

How Clear is “Free and Clear” under § 363? You’re a Real Character: When Can Debt Be Recharacterized as Equity? How Can I Get a One of Those: A Third Party Release? A panel discussion of lawyers with more than 100 years of bankruptcy experience, moderated by a bankruptcy judge who used to be a corporate lawyer. The panel will discuss recent court decisions and focus on unique issues that can arise when a debtor seeks to sell estate property “free and clear,” including whether § 363 can be used to sell real property free of an otherwise valid lease, the debate over whether and under what circumstances a bankruptcy court may rule that a facially valid loan is really subordinated equity, and whether post-Stern bankruptcy courts have the authority to grant releases to non-debtors and, if so, under what conditions.

This panel will cover the effects of the recent Supreme Court decision under § 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code, valuation of avoidance actions, pre-bankruptcy planning, creditor intervention, and conflicts preventing individual debtors from pursuing claims.