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The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law will hold its rescheduled hearing titled "Oversight of Bankruptcy Law and Legislative Proposals" tomorrow at 10 a.m. EDT. Robert J. Keach of Bernstein Shur (Portland, Maine), a former ABI President and co-chair of the ABI Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11, will testify on ABI's behalf. For further information on the hearing, please click here.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law will hold its rescheduled hearing titled "Oversight of Bankruptcy Law and Legislative Proposals" on Tuesday, June 25, at 10 a.m. EDT. Robert J. Keach of Bernstein Shur (Portland, Maine), a former ABI President and co-chair of the ABI Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11, will testify on ABI's behalf. For further information on the hearing, please click here.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) is adding her voice to a growing list of politicians admonishing private equity’s stewardship of debt-laden retailers, Bloomberg News reported. “There are definitely active discussions” toward legislation that would address the collapse of struggling companies tied to buyout firms, Baldwin said yesterday following the release of a letter chiding Sun Capital Partners Inc. for its management of bankrupt retailer Shopko Stores Inc. “Legislation will be designed so this doesn’t happen again.” Baldwin is the latest elected official to accuse private-equity firms of loading debt onto struggling retailers while reaping the benefits at workers’ expense. The issue burst into the public sphere last year when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) helped lobby for the creation of a hardship fund for workers after the collapse of Toys “R” Us Inc., and surfaced again after Sears Holdings Corp. filed for bankruptcy in October.

Originally scheduled for tomorrow at 2 p.m. EDT, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law has moved the hearing titled "Oversight of Bankruptcy Law and Legislative Proposals" to next Tuesday, June 25, at 10 a.m. EDT. Robert J. Keach of Bernstein Shur (Portland, Maine), a former ABI President and co-chair of the ABI Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11, will testify on ABI's behalf. The hearing will examine a number of bills and priority issues important to business and consumer bankruptcy practice. Most of the bills enjoy bipartisan and bicameral support in Congress. The following are the legislation and issues to be discussed:

- The Small Business Reorganization Act (S. 1091) takes into account recommendations from ABI's Chapter 11 Commission to remove barriers to bankruptcy for financially struggling small and medium-sized businesses.

- The Family Farmer Relief Act of 2019 (H.R. 2236; S. 897) is supported by ABI to raise the debt cap to $10 million for family farmers seeking chapter 12 protection.

- Honoring American Veterans in Extreme Need Act of 2019 (HAVEN Act) (H.R. 2938; S. 679) would exclude VA and DoD disability payments from the monthly income calculation used for bankruptcy means testing. The law currently allows Social Security benefits to be excluded from the calculation, but not veterans disability payments. ABI's Veterans’ Affairs Task Force member Holly Petraeus is scheduled to testify.

- Puerto Rico Recovery Accuracy in Disclosures Act of 2019 (PRRADA) (H.R. 683; S. 1675) would impose certain requirements on the payment of compensation to professional persons employed in voluntary cases commenced under PROMESA.

For further information on the hearing and to obtain forthcoming witness testimony, please click here.

Trump-appointed regulators came into office saying they would pare back Wall Street’s postcrisis rulebook. More than two years into the administration’s tenure, most of the work remains unfinished, particularly for the biggest banks, the Wall Street Journal reported. That worries financial firms and some Republican lawmakers, who fear the window for a regulatory rollback could be narrow, especially if Democrats notch pivotal electoral victories in 2020. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and a group of other Republican senators are urging regulators to move more quickly. The goal: lock in as many changes as possible by year’s end. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who met privately in March with top bank regulators along with other Republican senators, said that he wanted to see more progress on a regulatory overhaul signed into law last year. “The bill can’t work unless it’s implemented,” said Rounds, who, like Moran, sits on the Senate Banking Committee. The rollback efforts combine those required under last year’s law and those that can be put into place by the regulators on their own. Democrats and critics of the changes say that the initiatives already underway go too far, could undermine the financial system and aren’t warranted when banks are posting record profits. Daniel Tarullo, the Fed’s regulatory point-person during the Obama administration, in May said post-crisis rules “could be endangered by a kind of low-intensity deregulation consisting of an accumulation of non-headline-grabbing changes and an opaque relaxation of supervisory rigor.” Under the law passed a year ago, regulators face a fall deadline to simplify rules for midsize and small banks. They also want to make progress by year’s end to retool rules that limit speculative trading by large firms and test the ability of firms such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. or Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to continue lending during a severe recession.