Banking and Finance Law Commons^™

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

What Makes Asset Securitization "Inefficient"?, Kenji Yamazaki

ExpressO

Despite the damage caused by the recent Enron scandal , the asset securitization market has been vibrant and has become a popular financing alternative . A number of academics emphasize its merits and suggest that it is a more favorable way of financing, and Congress’s proposal to make sales of asset in securitization immune from characterization as secured transactions under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2001 (the “Reform Act”) almost materialized when the Enron scandal hit the scene. Conversely, there have been accusations that securitization is not a legitimate way of financing because, for example, it fosters fraudulent transactions.

Why …

When Bankruptcy Meets Antitrust: The Case For Non-Cash Auctions In Concentrated Banking Markets, David Hahn

ExpressO

One of the most heated debates in bankruptcy law scholarship has been the optimal design of corporate bankruptcy law. While traditionalist scholars defended the actual practice of Chapter 11 of the Bakruptcy Code, the law-and-economics movement has by and large heavily crticized Chapter 11 and called for its replacement. Several models of corporate bankruptcy have been offered in the literature as imporved alternatives thereto. In this article, I examine the various models offered in the literature, as well as the basic model of Chapter 11, against a certain realistic background: that of an economy characterized by the concentrated dominance of …

Price, Path & Pride: Third-Party Closing Opinion Practice Among U.S. Lawyers (A Preliminary Investigation), Jonathan C. Lipson

ExpressO

This article presents the first in-depth exploration of third-party closing opinions, a common but curious – and potentially troubling -- feature of U.S. business law practice. Third-party closing opinions are letters delivered at the closing of most large transactions by the attorney for one party (e.g., the borrower) to the other party (e.g., the lender) offering limited assurance that the transaction will have legal force and effect.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of legal opinions are delivered every week. Yet, lawyers often complain that they create needless risk and cost, and produce little benefit. Closing opinions thus pose a basic question: …

Bankruptcy Reform: Hearing Before The S. Comm. On The Judiciary, 109th Cong., Feb. 10, 2005 (Statement Todd Zywicki, Visiting Prof. Of Law, Geo. U. L. Center), Todd J. Zywicki

Testimony Before Congress

No abstract provided.

Patterns In A Complex System: An Empirical Study Of Valuation In Business Bankruptcy Cases, Bernard Trujillo

Law Faculty Publications

This Article applies complex systems research methods to explore the characteristics of the bankruptcy legal system. It presents the results of an empirical study of twenty years of bankruptcy court valuation doctrine in business cramdown cases. The data provide solid descriptions of how courts exercise their discretion in valuing firms and assets.

This Article has two objectives: First, using scientific methodology, it explains the content of bankruptcy valuation doctrine. Second, the Article uses doctrine as a variable to explore the system dynamics that govern the processes of change over time.

Significant findings include: (1) Courts tend to split the difference …

The Seller's Right To Cure A Failure To Perform In International Sales, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

The right of a defaulting party to cure a non-performance under the condition that such cure does not create any – or at least any excessive – hardship for the aggrieved party, correlated by the aggrieved party’s obligation to receive such curative performance, has emerged as the single most innovative contribution of the Uniform Commercial Code to sales law in general. However, in comparative perspective the cure doctrine is by no means universal nor uniform. This study offers a construction of the meaning of contractual cure and in particular its relation to the aggrieved party’s power to terminate the contract …

In Re Adelphia Communications Corp. (Decided Dec. 5, 2003), Phillip Mahoney

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Redesigning The International Lender Of Last Resort, Patrick Bolton, David A. Skeel Jr.

Center for Contract and Economic Organization

This paper is concerned with the issue of how to balance bailouts (or "lending into arrears") with debt reductions (or "private sector involvement") in the resolution of sovereign debt crises. It provides a review of recent proposals for improving the sovereign debt restructuring process. In addition to defending a sovereign bankruptcy proposal we have put forward in recent work, this article proposes a major reorientation of the IMF's role in sovereign debt crises.

Enforcing The Fair Housing Act: Can Agency Interpretations Override Congressional Intent In Anti-Discrimination Legislation?, Francesca Laguardia

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

On October 12, 2005, the Southern District of New York ruled that the New York State Attorney General was enjoined from enforcing state laws prohibiting discriminatory lending against national banks.1 The court found in favor of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the federal regulator of national banks. The OCC claimed that while state fair lending laws had not been preempted, the New York State Attorney General’s (OAG) authority to enforce those laws had been preempted by a series of federal statutes and OCC-written regulations that give the OCC exclusive authority to bring any enforcement action against …

The Confused U.S. Framework For Foreign-Bank Insolvency: An Open Research Agenda, Steven L. Schwarcz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Financial Contracts And The New Bankruptcy Code: Insulating Markets From Bankrupt Debtors And Bankruptcy Judges, Edward R. Morrison, Joerg Riegel

Faculty Scholarship

The reforms of 2005 yield important but subtle changes in the Bankruptcy Code's treatment of financial contracts. They might appear only to eliminate longstanding uncertainty surrounding the protections available to financial contract counterparties, especially counterparties to repurchase transactions and other derivative contracts. But the ambit of the reforms is much broader. The expanded definitions – especially the definition of "swap agreement" – are now so broad that nearly every derivative contract is subject to the Code's protection. Instead of protecting particular counterparties to particular transactions, the Code now protects any counterparty to any derivative contract. Entire markets have been insulated …

How Law Affects Lending, Rainer F.H. Haselmann, Katharina Pistor, Vikrant Vig

Faculty Scholarship

The paper explores how legal change affects lending behavior of banks in twelve transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe. In contrast to previous studies, we use bank level rather than aggregate data, which allows us to control for country level heterogeneity and analyze the effect of legal change on different types of lenders. Using a differences-in-differences methodology to analyze the within country variation of changes in creditor rights protection, we find that the credit supplied by banks increases subsequent to legal change. Further, we show that collateral law matters more for credit market development than bankruptcy law. We also …

Derivatives And The Bankruptcy Code: Why The Special Treatment?, Franklin R. Edwards, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

The collapse of Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) in Fall 1998 and the Federal Reserve Bank's subsequent efforts to orchestrate a bailout raise important questions about the structure of the Bankruptcy Code. The Code contains numerous provisions affording special treatment to financial derivatives contracts, the most important of which exempts these contracts from the "automatic stay" and permits counterparties to terminate derivatives contracts with a debtor in bankruptcy and seize underlying collateral. No other counterparty or creditor of the debtor has such freedom; to the contrary, the automatic stay prohibits them from undertaking any act that threatens the debtor's assets. …