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Fueled by a very active membership, the Unsecured Trade Creditors Committee (UTC) was busy once again in 2015. Among other things, the UTC hosted multiple committee-wide conference calls on wide-ranging topics of interest to its members, published a quarterly newsletter containing articles on hot legal issues, organized panels at the two national ABI conferences, and wrote or edited multiple ABI publications. The UTC was a multichannel distributor of knowledge and information to our members, and provided great networking and leadership opportunities.

On May 21, 2015, as amended on Aug. 18, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued a decision approving the settlement and dismissal of a chapter 11 bankruptcy case through a structured dismissal.[1] The court approved the use of a structured dismissal of a chapter 11 bankruptcy where the dismissal calls for a distribution that does not specifically adhere to the priority scheme in Bankruptcy Code § 507.

Make-whole premiums are a fixture of commercial loan agreements. Their purpose is to determine the parties’ respective rights in the event that prepayment becomes economically efficient for a borrower.

On June 15, 2015, in Baker Botts L.L.P. v. ASARCO LLC,[1] the Supreme Court held that the Bankruptcy Code does not permit bankruptcy courts to award attorney fees under § 330(a) of the Bankruptcy Code to counsel or other professionals employed by the bankruptcy estate for work performed in defending a fee application, potentially giving unsecured

While the Bankruptcy Code provides for payment of the fees and expenses of an official creditors’ committee’s court-approved professionals[1] and for reimbursement of the expenses (although not the professional fees) incurred by a member of an official creditors’ committee incurred in performing committee duties,[2] it permits an unsecured creditor to seek reimbursement of “actual, necessary expenses,” plus “reasonable compensation for professional services” only where the creditor has made a “substantial contribution” in the chapter 11 case.[3]

You have probably given the preference defense speech countless times to unsecured trade creditor clients that 90-day payments are likely preferences, but may be covered by one of the typical § 547(c) defenses: subsequent provision of new value, ordinary course of business and contemporaneous exchange for new value. The standard defenses are so prevalent, it is easy to virtually ignore the § 546 limitations on avoiding powers (other than the two-year statute of limitations).

TransVantage Solutions Inc., a New Jersey-based corporation founded in 1964, provided freight audit and payment services to its customers. Its core business involved three parties and actions: A shipper or common carrier issued an invoice to a customer; the customer advanced money to TransVantage; and TransVantage reviewed the freight charges for accuracy and, when everything was in order, paid the carrier or shipper with the funds that had been entrusted to it.