Bankruptcy Law Commons^™

Center Of Main Interests, International Insolvency Case Venue, And Equality Of Arms: The Eurofood Decision Of The European Court Of Justice, Samuel Bufford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the Eurofood-E.C.J. decision and evaluates its impact on the decisions of the Irish and the Italian courts to open main insolvency cases for Eurofood. This Article also addresses the broader international insolvency law issues that the E.C.J. decision left open. Part II of this Article provides background information on the format and binding effect of a decision of the E.C.J. Part III explores the background of Parmalat and Eurofood and describes the Eurofood cases in the Irish and Italian courts prior to the E.C.J. decision. Part IV examines the E.C.J. decision, its rationale, and its application to …

Universal Proceduralism, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy Reform And The "Sweat Box" Of Credit Card Debt, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

Those that backed the 2005 bankruptcy reform law argued that it would protect creditors from consumer abuse and lack of financial responsibility. The substantial increase in the number of bankruptcies over the last decade combined with the perception of systemwide abuse apparently convinced legislators from both political parties that the backers had a point. Thus, Congress enacted amendments to the Bankruptcy Code that – if effective – would fundamentally change the core policies underlying the consumer bankruptcy system in this country. The rhetoric surrounding the reform debates pressed the idea that if borrowers had to repay more of their debts, …

Bankruptcy Decision Making: An Empirical Study Of Continuation, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Many small businesses attempt to reorganize under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, but most are ultimately liquidated instead. Little is known about this shutdown decision. It is widely suspected that the bankruptcy process exhibits a continuation bias, allowing failing businesses to linger under the protection of the court, which resists liquidation even when it is optimal. This paper examines the shutdown decision in a sample of Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases filed in a typical bankruptcy court over the course of a year. The presence of continuation bias is tested along several dimensions – the extent of managerial control …

Timbers Of Inwood Forest, The Economics Of Rent, And The Evolving Dynamics Of Chapter 11, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court's decision in Timbers of Inwood Forest occupies an unhappy position in bankruptcy case law. It is often remembered as a troubled interpretation of the Code, denying undersecured creditors compensation for an important source of depreciation – depreciation in the real value of a creditor's claim during a lengthy reorganization process. But Timbers was not a simple case in which a bank was denied adequate protection for lost investment opportunities. It was instead a case in which the bank tried to opt out of the bankruptcy process itself. The debtor was an apartment complex. After it entered bankruptcy, …

Sublicensing From A Distressed Company: Are You Placing Your Future In The Debtor's Hands?, Michelle M. Harner, David A. Beck

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Myth Of The Rational Borrower: Behaviorism, Rationality And The Misguided Reform Of Bankruptcy Law, Edward J. Janger, Susan Block-Lieb

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

How The Old World Encountered The New One: Regulatory Competition And Cooperation In European Corporate And Bankruptcy Law , Luca Enriques, Martin Gelter

Faculty Scholarship

The European framework for creditor protection has undergone a remarkable tansfomation in recent years. While the European Court of Justices Centros case and its progeny have given European Union businesses choice with respect to the state of incorporation, and hence to the substantive corporate law regime, the European Insolvency Regulation has introduced uniform conflict-of-law rules for insolvencies. However, this regime has opened up some forum shopping opportunities for corporate debtors. Both regulatory competition in corporate law and forum shopping in bankruptcy law have been discussed in the United States for years, while they are relativey new territory in the European …

Optimizing Consumer Credit Markets And Bankruptcy Policy, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the relationship between consumer credit markets and bankruptcy policy. In general, I argue that the causative relationships running between borrowing and bankruptcy compel a new strategy for policing the conduct of lenders and borrowers in modern consumer credit markets. The strategy must be sensitive to the role of the credit card in lending markets and must recognize that both issuers and cardholders are well placed to respond to the increased levels of spending and indebtedness. In the latter parts of the Article, I recommend mandatory minimum payment requirements, a tax on distressed credit card debt, and the …

The Supreme Court, The Solicitor General, And Bankruptcy: Bfp V. Resolution Trust Corporation, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter tells the story behind BFP v. Resolution Trust Corporation. I see BFP as a case that pitted relatively plain statutory language supporting the debtor-in-possession against policy interests supporting a secured creditor. I argue that an important explanation for the Supreme Court's decision to favor policy over the language of the statute was its perception of a need to protect the availability of non-bankruptcy remedies for secured creditors. Accordingly, I situate my discussion of BFP in the context of the role that the federal government has played in the Supreme Court's cases interpreting the Bankruptcy Code. In general, I …

International Insolvency Case Venue In The European Union: The Parmalat And Daisytek Controversies, Samuel Bufford

Faculty Scholarship

The European Union Insolvency Regulation (the EU Regulation) is a giant step forward in promoting international cooperation among EU countries for cross-border insolvency proceedings. It adopts a modified universalist solution to cross-border proceedings insofar as they are located within the EU. However, experience has shown that it needs improvement to work effectively. A venue battle now rages between courts of several European countries over which country's courts will administer particular cross-border proceedings and how the center of main interest is to be determined for this purpose.

This Article begins with a detailed examination of the two principal cases where conflicts …

Credit Cards, Consumer Credit, And Bankruptcy, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This paper analyzes the effects of credit card use on broader economic indicators, specifically consumer credit, and consumer bankruptcy filings. Using aggregate nation-level data from Australia, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, I find that credit card spending, lagged by 1-2 years, has a strong positive effect on consumer credit. Finally, I find a strong relation between credit card debt, lagged by 1-2 years, and bankruptcy, and a weaker relation between consumer credit, lagged by 1-2 years, and bankruptcy. The relations are robust across a variety of different lags and models that account for problems of multicollinearity …

"Contracting" For Credit, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

On a recent day, I used my credit cards in connection with a number of minor transactions. I made eight purchases, and I paid two credit card bills. I also discarded (without opening) three solicitations for new cards, balance transfer programs, or other similar offers to extend credit via a credit card. Statistics suggest that I am not atypical. U.S. consumers last year used credit cards in about 100 purchasing transactions per capita, with an average value of about $70. At the end of the year, Americans owed nearly $500 billion dollars, in the range of $1,800 for every man, …

A Chapter 11 Debtor's Life After Oct. 17: Not So Bad If You Effectively Plan, Michelle M. Harner, Carl E. Black

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Debtors Beware: The Expanding Universe Of Non-Assumable/Non-Assignable Contracts In Bankruptcy, Michelle M. Harner, Carl E. Black, Eric R. Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lost In Translation: From U.S. Corporate Charter Competition To Issuer Choice In International Securities Regulation, Frederick Tung

Faculty Scholarship

Corporate charter competition among U.S. states has been held out as a model of welfare-enhancing regulatory competition. Proponents of this story also rely on it as a basis for promoting regulatory competition in international securities regulation. Issuer choice proponents argue that an issuer of securities should be permitted to choose the securities regulation of any nation to govern its securities offerings and trading worldwide. This Article challenges the notion that the claimed success of corporate charter competition among U.S. states argues in favor of issuer choice for international securities regulation.

Even granting the assumptions of race-to-the-top advocates and accepting the …

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

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Serial Entrepreneurs And Small Business Bankruptcies, Douglas G. Baird, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Chapter 11 is thought to preserve the going-concern surplus of a financially distressed business – the extra value that its assets possess in their current configuration. Financial distress leads to conflicts among creditors that can lead to inefficient liquidation of a business with going-concern surplus. Chapter 11 avoids this by providing the business with a way of fashioning a new capital structure. This account of Chapter 11 fails to capture what is happening in the typical case. The typical Chapter 11 debtor is a small corporation whose assets are not specialized and rarely worth enough to pay tax claims. There …

Global Venue Controls Are Coming: A Reply To Professor Lopucki, Samuel Bufford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article details my disagreements with Professor Lynn LoPucki's article "Global and out of Control" (79 Am. Bankr. L.J. 79). Part I discusses universalism and territorialism, especially the modified version of universalism that I support. Part II examines the international venue provisions of the Model Law and the EU Regulation. Part III introduces the relevant venue shopping cases. Only two groups of cases are relevant for the purpose of this paper: the French and German subsidiaries of Daisytek and Eurofood (a subsidiary of Parmalat SpA, the Italian conglomerate). None of the other cases that Professor LoPucki discusses was subject to …

Adversary Proceedings In Bankruptcy: A Sideshow, Douglas G. Baird, Edward R. Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

Across a broad range of cases, the civil trial is disappearing. In the early 1960s, about twelve percent of federal civil cases were resolved by trial; by 2002 that percentage had fallen to less than two percent. This sharp decline raises important questions about the quality y and costs of decisionmaking in federal district courts. After all, these courts exist to resolve cases and controversies. It matters whether (and why) these disputes are resolved in or outside the courtroom.

Marc Galanter and Elizabeth Warren suggest that the same thing is happening in the bankruptcy courts and that there is likewise …

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 …

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 …

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. …

The Death Of Secured Lending, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Reliance Interest In Insolvency Law: A Response To Harris And Mooney, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Secured Lending, Edward J. Janger

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The Jurisdiction Of Bankruptcy Courts Over Post-Confirmation Federal Tax Liabilities: Towards A New Jurisprudence Of 11 U.S.C. § 505, Shu-Yi Oei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Sovereign Debt Reform And The Best Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

In April 2002 the International Monetary Fund introduced a sovereign bankruptcy proposal only to be rebuffed by the United States Treasury. Where the IMF wanted a mandatory bankruptcy regime, the Treasury wanted to solve distress problems with contractual devices. Sovereign bondholders and sovereign issuers themselves flatly rejected both proposals, even though they were nominally the beneficiaries of both proponents. This Article addresses and explains this bondholder reaction. In so doing, it takes a highly skeptical view of the IMF's proposal even as it shows that the incentive structure surrounding sovereign lending renders untenable the Treasury's contractarian proposal. The Article's analysis …

Credit Card Policy In A Globalized World, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

This paper relies on data from countries around the world to present a comprehensive analysis of policy issues related to credit cards. The first part discusses the rise of credit cards and debit cards and how their uses differ from country to country. It closes with a framework for explaining why cards are more and less successful in different countries, focusing in large part on the ready availability of detailed consumer credit information. The second part considers the relation between credit card use and bankruptcy. Relying on a time series of data from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and …

The Rise Of State Bankruptcy-Directed Legislation, Ronald J. Mann

Faculty Scholarship

The papers at this conference generally focus on the rise of securitization and the possibility that statutes designed to remedy abuses of securitization will wreak undue havoc on our capital markets. I take my starting point from the relatively intractable policy questions that those problems raise. It seems well accepted that securitization provides financing at lower cost to the large companies that use those transactions. If so, rules fostering securitization could enhance the overall performance of our economy. At the same time, there are legitimate concerns that the rise of securitization makes it less likely that large companies in financial …