Organizations Law Commons^™

Countering Misinformation In The Health Care System: The Case For Stricter Regulations Within Health Insurance Provider Directories, Jaclyn Kleban

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jpmorgan Chase London Whale A: Risky Business, Arwin G. Zeissler, Daisuke Ikeda, Andrew Metrick

Journal of Financial Crises

In December 2011, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) instructed the bank’s Chief Investment Office to reduce the size of its Synthetic Credit Portfolio (SCP) during 2012, so that JPM could decrease its RiskWeighted Assets as the bank prepared to adopt the impending Basel III bank capital regulations. However, the SCP traders were also told to minimize the trading costs incurred to reduce Risk-Weighted Assets, while still maintaining the opportunity to profit from unexpected corporate bankruptcies. In an attempt to balance these competing objectives, head SCP derivatives trader Bruno Iksil suggested in January 2012 …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Market For Corporate Control In The Zone Of Insolvency: Symposium Introduction, Edward J. Janger

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.

Corporate Distress, Credit Default Swaps, And Defaults: Information And Traditional, Contingent, And Empty Creditors, Henry T. C. Hu

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Federal securities law seeks to ensure the quality and quantity of information that corporations make publicly available. Informational asymmetries associated with companies in financial distress, but not in bankruptcy, have received little attention. This Article explores some important asymmetries in this context that are curious in their origin, nature, and impact. The asymmetries are especially curious because of the impact of a world with credit default swaps (CDS) and CDS-driven debt “decoupling.” The Article explores two categories of asymmetries. The first relates to information on the company itself. Here, the Article suggests there is fresh evidence for the belief that …

Bankruptcy Fiduciary Duties In The World Of Claims Trading, John A. E. Pottow

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

In earlier work, I explored the role of fiduciary duties in the bankruptcy trustee’s administration of a debtor’s estate, noting the absence of any explicit demarcation of those duties in the Bankruptcy Code. In this piece, I report the highlights of that analysis and see to what extent (if any) fiduciary duties can inform policy prescriptions for the issue of bankruptcy claims trading, colorfully referred to by some as the world of “bankruptcy M&A.” My initial take is pessimistic. Fiduciary duties, at least as traditionally conceived in bankruptcy, are unlikely to provide much help. But there is still a source …

Transparency In Corporate Groups, Jay Lawrence Westbrook

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

This Article addresses a remarkable blind spot in American law: the failure to apply the well-established principles of secured credit to prevent inefficiency, confusion, and fraud in the manipulation of the webs of subsidiaries within corporate groups. In particular, “asset partitioning” has been a fashionable subject in which the central problem of non-transparency has been often mentioned but little addressed. This Article offers a concept for a new system of corporate disclosure for the benefit of creditors and other stakeholders. It would require disclosure of corporate structures and allocations of assets among affiliates to the extent the affiliates are to …

Badges Of Opportunism: Principles For Policing Restructuring Support Agreements, Edward J. Janger, Adam J. Levitin

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Bankruptcy is a market for corporate control. Current bankruptcy practice offers two alternative mechanisms for effectuating changes in control of a firm: (1) a pre-plan all-asset sale under section 363(b) of the Bankruptcy Code; or (2) an asset sale or recapitalization pursuant to a plan of reorganization under section 1129 of the Code. Pre-plan sales under section 363(b) are fast, but lack the procedural protections associated with a restructuring or sale pursuant to a plan. Plan confirmation can be costly and uncertain, however. Restructuring support agreements (“RSAs”)—contractual agreements to support a future restructuring that has certain agreed-upon characteristics—appear to offer …

Corporate Governance And Bankruptcy, Daniel J.H. Greenwood

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Ordinary corporate law invests enormous authority in corporate leaders, largely without accountability either to those they govern or to the judiciary, in defiance of much of what we know about effective governance procedure. Instead, we rely on the markets in which the corporation participates as the primary check on incumbent officials. Regardless of whether relying on markets is sufficient in the ordinary course, corporate insolvency is the markets’ verdict that incumbent management has failed. Accordingly, in bankruptcy and insolvency more generally, the law ought to abandon its ordinary deference to the corporate powers that be and instead impose standard good …

Private Benefits Without Control? Modern Chapter 11 And The Market For Corporate Control, Oscar Couwenberg, Stephen J. Lubben

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Outside of bankruptcy, a board of directors’ decision to take control rights away from existing shareholders and grant them to another is subject to heightened fiduciary duties. As the sale of control represents a kind of end game, shareholders have one last chance to realize the full value for their investment. In such a context, their interests warrant special protection. A similar sale of control can happen in a chapter 11 procedure when a bankruptcy plan revamps the capital structure of the firm. In such a restructuring of the firm, control rights can be newly created, redefined and redistributed to …

Lender Discrimination, Black Churches And Bankruptcy, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Based on my original empirical research, in this Article, I expose a disparity between the demographics of the roughly 650 religious congregations that have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy during part of the last decade and congregations nationwide. Churches with predominately black membership — Black Churches — appeared in chapter 11 more than three times as often as they appear among churches across the country. A conservative estimate of the percentage of Black Churches among religious congregation chapter 11 debtors is 60%. The likely percentage is upward of 75%. Black Churches account for 21% of congregations nationwide.

Why are Black …

Micro, Small And Medium Enterprise (Msme) Insolvency In Canada, Janis P. Sarra

All Faculty Publications

Insolvency law is broadly recognized as an essential tool in well-functioning economies. A balance of mechanisms that allow for timely and effective liquidation, but also for a “fresh start” for individual entrepreneurs and the rehabilitation of viable businesses, tends to enhance creditor recoveries and lender confidence. This study examines the treatment of micro, small and medium enterprises (“MSME”) under the Canada Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. It undertakes a qualitative examination of 200 business insolvencies in 2015, in order to try to understand the reasons for insolvency, types of debt, and outcomes of proceedings. The study reports on the results of …

Secured Credit In Religious Institutions' Reorganizations, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Scholars increasingly assume that most businesses enter Chapter 11 with a high percentage of secured debt, which leads to a high percentage of cases ending in the sale of the debtor’s assets under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code rather than with confirmation of a reorganization plan. However, evidence and discussions about “the end of bankruptcy” center on secured creditors’ role in the reorganizations of very large corporations. The few analyses of cross-sections of Chapter 11 proceedings suggest that secured creditor control is not nearly as omnipresent as asserted and that 363 sales are not as dominant as assumed.

This …

When Faith Falls Short: Bankruptcy Decisions Of Churches, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What does a church do when it is about to go bust? Religious organizations, like any business, can experience financial distress. Leaders could try to solve their churches’ financial problems on their own. Perhaps leaders do not view the problems as addressable with law. Or perhaps they do not think, as a moral or spiritual matter, that they should resort to the legal system, such as bankruptcy, to deal with their churches’ inability to pay its debts. Yet about ninety religious organizations seek to reorganize under the Bankruptcy Code every year. This Article relies on interviews with forty-five of these …

Liquidity, Systemic Risk, And The Bankruptcy Treatment Of Financial Contracts, Rizwaan J. Mokal

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.

Municipalities In Distress: A Preventive View, Tamar Frankel

Faculty Scholarship

The recent rising failure of municipalities has not produced the avalanche that some expected.¹ Yet concerns have been raised that the future will spawn more failures.² New York City and other municipalities face soaring pension, Medicaid, and retiree health care costs.³ New York City’s neighboring counties face similar challenges; Yonkers, Suffolk, and Nassau Counties each face their own set of fiscal problems.⁴

Municipalities that have failed, or are likely to fail, have raised a number of legal issues implicated by their inability to pay their debts. Some questions seem new. For example, are employees’ pension benefits …

The New Value Exception To The Absolute Priority Rule In Chapter 11 Reorganizations: What Should The Rule Be? , Linda J. Rusch

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trusts Versus Corporations: An Empirical Analysis Of Competing Organizational Forms, A. Joseph Warburton

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This paper studies the effects of organizational form on managerial behavior and firm performance, from an empirical perspective. Managers of trusts are subject to stricter fiduciary responsibilities than managers of corporations. This paper examines the ramifications empirically, by exploiting data generated by a change in British regulations in the 1990s that allowed mutual funds to organize as either a trust or a corporation. I find evidence that trust law is effective in curtailing opportunistic behavior, as trust managers charge significantly lower fees than their observationally equivalent corporate counterparts. Trust managers also incur lower risk. However, evidence suggests that trust managers …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

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

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Charity In Bankruptcy And Ghosts Of Donors Past, Present, And Future (Symposium), Evelyn Brody

All Faculty Scholarship

The bankruptcy of a charity represents the clash of two policy regimes: charity law's willingness to preserve assets for the public purpose determined by the donor as against bankruptcy law's desire to maximize assets for distribution to creditors. As a general rule, assets will be distributed to creditors; as the courts say, 'a man must be just before he is generous.' However, when a charitable donee goes out of existence or otherwise becomes unable to perform a charitable trust or restricted gift, the courts will try to identify those charitable assets that are restricted in such a manner that they …

Bankruptcy Law And Inefficient Entitlements, Irit Haviv-Segal

ExpressO

The question as to the justification of bankruptcy law remains unanswered. The literature tends to emphasize the conflict and inability to compromise between the different normative outlooks of the insolvency law system. A deeper reflection on the existing theories of bankruptcy law reveals, however, that all theories share the same starting point: All theories share the understanding that efficiency considerations justify the enforcement of contractual bankruptcy arrangements. When the social theories call for increased levels of coercion and redistribution, these theories rely on normative considerations of distributive justice and rehabilitation values. They by no means rely on efficiency grounds. This …

Reorganization A Comparative Study Of Reorganization In Denmark And In The United States, Poul Jagd Mogensen

LLM Theses and Essays

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and discuss a list of specific problems in the current Danish system and in this analysis to examine how these problems are dealt with under the United States laws on reorganization. The thesis consists of five parts in addition to this Introduction. Part II is an introduction to the laws on reorganization in Denmark and in the United States. Part II also includes a brief introduction to out-of-court workouts as an alternative to reorganization under the bankruptcy laws. Part III provides statistical information on the number of reorganizations, the outcome of reorganizations, …