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Full-Text Articles in Law
Industry Peer Information And The Equity Valuation Accuracy Of Firms Emerging From Chapter 11, Bingxu Fang, Sasan Saiy
Industry Peer Information And The Equity Valuation Accuracy Of Firms Emerging From Chapter 11, Bingxu Fang, Sasan Saiy
Research Collection School Of Accountancy
Valuation plays a central role in determining Chapter 11 reorganization outcomes. However, obtaining accurate valuation estimates of reorganized firms is challenging because of limited firm-specific market-based information and the oft-conflicting incentives of claimholders. We examine the role of industry peer information in reducing misvaluations and its implications for unintended interclaimant wealth transfers and postreorganization performance. First, we find that the availability of relevant industry peer information is negatively associated with equity valuation errors for firms emerging from Chapter 11. Cross-sectional results suggest that the relation between industry peer information and valuation errors varies substantially with debtors’ information environment and case …
An Innovative Framework: Evaluating The New German Business Stabilization And Restructuring Law (Starug), Andreas Rauch
An Innovative Framework: Evaluating The New German Business Stabilization And Restructuring Law (Starug), Andreas Rauch
Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business
This comment examines the restructuring framework, restrukturierungsgesetz (“StaRUG”), and argues that this new law represents an effective—albeit radical—departure from Germany’s previous, conservative insolvency regime. Passed in response to a 2019 EU Directive aimed at modernizing restructuring law Union-wide, and integrated into the German legal system against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, StaRUG and its ancillary reforms in other areas of German law create a restructuring proceeding that places a premium on a debtor’s continued business operations. Thus, in a striking shift from the traditional German approach to business distress, which strongly emphasized creditor rights, the new StaRUG focuses on …
Pandemic Hope For Chapter 11 Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.
Pandemic Hope For Chapter 11 Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
One of the biggest surprises of the recent pandemic from a bankruptcy perspective has been the ready availability of financing. A variety of factors—such as an estimated $2.5 trillion in available funding at the outset of the crisis and the buoyant stock market—may have contributed. In this Essay, I focus on a less widely appreciated factor, a striking shift in the capital structure of many corporate debtors. Rather than borrowing from one group of lenders, debtors now often borrow from multiple groups of diverse lenders. Although the new capital structure complexity has downsides, it also could counteract a longstanding problem …
The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy H: The Global Contagion, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick
The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy H: The Global Contagion, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick
Journal of Financial Crises
When Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, it was the largest such filing in U.S. history and a huge shock to the world’s financial markets, which were already stressed from the deflated housing bubble and questions about subprime mortgages. Lehman was the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank with assets of $639 billion and its operations spread across the globe. Lehman’s clients and counterparties began to disclose millions of dollars of potential losses as they accounted for their exposures. But the impact of Lehman’s demise was felt well beyond its counterparties. Concern regarding its real estate assets, its large …
The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy B: Risk Limits And Stress Tests, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick
The Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy B: Risk Limits And Stress Tests, Rosalind Z. Wiggins, Andrew Metrick
Journal of Financial Crises
Investment banks are in the business of taking calculated risks. Risk management infrastructure facilitates the safe pursuit of profits and the balancing of associated risks. By 2006, Lehman Brothers was thought to have a very respectable risk management system, and even its regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, viewed its risk framework as being fully compliant with regulatory requirements. In its public disclosures, Lehman characterized its risk controls as “meaningful constraints on its risk taking” and evidence of its continued financial stability. Beginning in late 2006, however, Lehman began dismantling its carefully crafted risk management framework as it pursued a …
Foreword: Bankruptcy’S New And Old Frontiers, William W. Bratton, David A. Skeel Jr.
Foreword: Bankruptcy’S New And Old Frontiers, William W. Bratton, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
This Symposium marks the fortieth anniversary of the enactment of the 1978 Bankruptcy Code (the “1978 Code” or the “Code”) with an extended look at seismic changes that currently are reshaping Chapter 11 reorganization. Today’s typical Chapter 11 case looks radically different than did the typical case in the Code’s early years. In those days, Chapter 11 afforded debtors a cozy haven. Most everything that mattered occurred within the context of the formal proceeding, where the debtor enjoyed agenda control, a leisurely timetable, and judicial solicitude. The safe haven steadily disappeared over time, displaced by a range of countervailing forces …
Rediscovering Corporate Governance In Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.
Rediscovering Corporate Governance In Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
In this Essay on Lynn LoPucki and Bill Whitford’s corporate reorganization project, written for a symposium honoring Bill Whitford, I begin by very briefly describing its historical antecedents. The project draws on the insights and perspectives of two closely intertwined traditions: the legal realism of 1930s, whose exemplars included William Douglas and other participants in the SEC study; and the law in action movement at the University of Wisconsin. In Section II, I briefly survey the key contributions of the corporate governance project, which punctured the then-conventional wisdom about the treatment of shareholders in bankruptcy, managers’ principal allegiance, and many …
From Chrysler And General Motors To Detroit, David A. Skeel Jr.
From Chrysler And General Motors To Detroit, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
In the past five years, three of the most remarkable bankruptcy cases in American history have come out of Detroit: the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors in 2009, and of Detroit itself in 2012. The principal objective of this Article is simply to show that the Grand Bargain at the heart of the Detroit bankruptcy is the direct offspring of the bankruptcy sale transactions that were used to restructure Chrysler and GM. The proponents of Detroit’s “Grand Bargain” never would have dreamed up the transaction were it not for the federal government-engineered carmaker bankruptcies. The Article’s second objective, based …
Politics In The American Airlines-U.S. Airways Merger And Antitrust Settlement, Michelle Chan
Politics In The American Airlines-U.S. Airways Merger And Antitrust Settlement, Michelle Chan
Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law
American Airlines was one of the airline industry’s darlings. A legacy airline, it was a household name, a massive entity, employed thousands, and commanded a fearsome presence among other industry players like unions and airport terminals. However, with ballooning costs and the red ocean airline industry’s evolution, American Airlines’ parent company, AMR, was forced into bankruptcy in November 2011. To emerge from Chapter 11, American Airlines and U.S. Airways announced plans to merge and come out a stronger, larger airline in February 2013. The Department of Justice Antitrust Division shortly thereafter filed a lawsuit opposing the merger, alleging it would …
Assessing The Chrysler Bankruptcy, Mark J. Roe, David A. Skeel Jr.
Assessing The Chrysler Bankruptcy, Mark J. Roe, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
Chrysler entered and exited bankruptcy in 42 days, making it one of the fastest major industrial bankruptcies in memory. It entered as a company widely thought to be ripe for liquidation if left on its own, obtained massive funding from the United States Treasury, and exited via a pseudo sale of its main assets to a new government-funded entity. The unevenness of the compensation to prior creditors raised considerable concerns in capital markets, which we evaluate here. We conclude that the Chrysler bankruptcy cannot be understood as complying with good bankruptcy practice, that it resurrected discredited practices long thought interred …
The Past, Present And Future Of Debtor-In-Possession Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.
The Past, Present And Future Of Debtor-In-Possession Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.
All Faculty Scholarship
Chapter 11's distinctive post-petition financing rules trace their ancestry back to the origins of large scale corporate reorganization in America in the nineteenth century. In this sense, post-petition financing has always been with us. But in the past decade, the role of the financers has changed. After a century in the shadows, post-petition lenders have stepped onto center stage. The DIP loan agreement has become the single most important governance lever in many large Chapter 11 cases. Why have these formerly bashful financers suddenly started hogging the spotlight? I argue in this article that the generous terms offered to DIP …