Business Restructuring Review

In this issue:

• Rights offerings in Bankruptcy: More Than New Capital
  Over the past decade, rights offerings have become a valuable and frequently used source of exit financing for chapter 11 debtors.
• In re Leslie Controls, Inc.: The Delaware Bankruptcy Court Weighs in on The Common-Interest Doctrine
  The court ruled that the doctrine protected communications relating to insurance coverage for potential asbestos liabilities which a debtor’s counsel shared with counsel to a committee of asbestos plaintiffs and to a proposed future-claims representative during restructuring negotiations.
• Newsworthy
• Texas Rangers: a Big Change-up on Impairment?
  A texas bankruptcy court held that, in order to render a secured creditor’s claim “unimpaired,” a Chapter 11 plan need not honor all of the creditor’s contractual rights, so long as the creditor retains the right to sue the debtor for breach of the contract.
• In re Quigley Company, Inc.: New York Bankruptcy Court Denies Confirmation of Proposed Chapter 11 Asbestos Plan
  The court found that the Chapter 11 case was a Quigley bankruptcy "only in name" and that the debtor’s parent had arranged the case to protect itself from derivative liability for asbestos claims.
• Forum Shopping, Portable COMI, and the Lessons of Wind Hellas
  The ability of a debtor to change its center of main interests from one country to another to find the jurisdiction best suited to successful insolvency proceedings has become a controversial aspect of cross-border insolvency laws enacted during the last decade.
• Trademark-Licensee Limbo in Bankruptcy Continues
  A ruling recently handed down by the third circuit indicates that the rights of trademark licensees affected by a debtor’s rejection of a trademark-licensing agreement remain unclear.
• Bankruptcy Trustee May Sell State-Law Avoidance Claims
  The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently addressed several issues that have created a split of authority among the federal circuits.
• Rule 2019 update
  U.S. bankruptcy courts continue to struggle with the disclosure requirements of Bankruptcy Rule 2019 in anticipation of proposed changes to the rule.
• From The Top
  Discussing bankruptcy-related developments in the U.S. Supreme Court’s October 2010 term.