An unprecedented filing leads to an unprecedented joint solution from the both the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice -Commercial List supervising the Nortel liquidation in Canada and the U.S.
Structuring Cross-Border Deals to Protect Creditor Interests
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently held that a bankruptcy court must conduct a § 363 review of a chapter 15 debtor’s sale of U.S. assets, even if the sale was previously approved by a foreign court.[1] Although it acknowledged that comity is an important consideration in a chapter 15 proceedings, the Second Circuit determined that § 1520(a)(2)[2] “acts as a brake or limitation on comity” by requiring bankruptcy courts to conduct the § 363[3] review.[4]
The Business Reorganization Committee held a free committee wide call on Tuesday, September 23rd, at 4 pm ET. The topic was titled "Looking at International Insolvency/Restructurings Through the Bankruptcy Code and Beyond," and featured key speakers, including: Patrick Mohan (Moderator) of Reorg Research (Columbia, S.C.), Rachel Ehrlich Albanese of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP (New York).
The Fall of OGX
Former billionaire Eike Batista’s oil firm OGX filed for bankruptcy protection in late October 2013 after OGX had defaulted on a $45 million bond payment earlier in the month.[1] On October 30th, 2013, OGX Petróleo e Gás Participações S.A. (“OGX Participações”)[2] and OGX Petróleo e Gás S.A. (“OGX Petróleo e Gás”), both Brazilian companies; OGX International GMBH (“OGX International”), an Austrian company; and OGX Austria GMBH (“OGX Austria”), also an Austrian company, filed for reorganization before the Fourth Business Court of Rio de Janeiro (RJ).
Editor's note: Following is an article by Robin Darton of Tanner De Witt (an established, independent Hong Kong law firm), addressing issues in his home venue of Hong Kong. Robin is particularly well suited to the task,having practiced for over 20 years as a solicitor in Hong Kong in litigation and other contentious issues, with an emphasis on contentious insolvency and restructuring matters in the UK, Hong Kong and the Asia region. TAB
On June 6, 2014, the French Constitutional Court (Conseil constitutionnel) ruled on the question of whether a court should be entitled to convert a receivership proceeding into a winding-up proceeding on its own initiative.
Readers may be familiar with the continuing debates over universalism (one court and one insolvency law) vs. territorialism (many courts and many insolvency laws) that have dominated discussions of cross-border insolvencies in recent years.[1] Realizing that true universalism is an ideal that is unlikely to come to pass in the real world, universalists have generally embraced a modified universalism that acknowledges circumstances that make it proper and (practically and politically) necessary to recognize and protect certain local interests.
Editor’s note: This article relies on a translation of the EBL provided by the Bankruptcy Law and Restructuring Research Center of China University of Politics and Law, as supervised by Prof. Li Shuguang, September 2006.
[1]Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code was enacted in 2005 to implement the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency formulated by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Part of the reason for needing a U.S. implementation of the Model Law was in recognition of the mutli-national presences of many entities, and thus the need for multi-national solutions for insolvencies of these entities.[2]