Real Estate

Big and Little Boxes: The Ins and Outs of Retail Restructuring

Recent decades have seen substantial expansion in exemptions from the Bankruptcy Code’s provisions with respect to repurchase agreements, or “repos.” These agreements, which are equivalent to very-short-term (often one-day) secured loans, are exempt from such core bankruptcy provisions as the automatic stay, the avoidability of fraudulent transfers and the avoidability of preferences. Recent scholarship has questioned whether these exemptions are justified for mortgage-backed securities and other securities that could prove illiquid or unable to realize their long-term value in the event of the kind of panic experienced during the financial crisis of 2007-09. This panel will explore the arguments for and against revising the Bankruptcy Code’s existing treatment of these agreements.

This panel will address recent developments in SARE cases.

Don’t Restrict My Sale: The Enforceability of Restrictive Covenants and Easements in Assets Sales in Bankruptcy

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.

Ethics & Professional Compensation/Real Estate Committees: This panel will explore various ethical issues that often arise in a single asset real estate bankruptcy case from the perspectives of the debtor, secured creditor and bankruptcy judge — via an entertaining and interactive fictional case study.

This panel will survey tricky issues involving eligibility, good-faith filings, small business bankruptcies and single-asset cases.

Shoveling Through the Dirt of Real Estate Fraud