In this paper we focus on the concern that a preference for quick sales over traditional reorganization cases - which we see in both the United States and Canada - might allow the debtor's management to work with secured lenders to extract assets from the debtor in a way that would not be...

Understanding the costs of corporate bankruptcy has importance in a variety of contexts. Most obviously, if the costs of corporate bankruptcy are “excessive” – a term that is surprisingly difficult to define – it has clear policy implications for legislators with regard to the Bankruptcy...

In this paper our goal is to identify the core of corporate bankruptcy law that parties cannot achieve on their own, no matter how robust their contract law. Our approach takes organizational law as starting point and we posit that bankruptcy law is a necessary addition to organizational law....

In early 2005, the American Bankruptcy Institute awarded me a $345,000 grant to conduct the most comprehensive, independent empirical study of professional fees in chapter 11 cases to date. This report represents the results of that study

According to its critics, most prominently Lynn LoPucki, Delaware has become so desperate for large corporate bankruptcy cases that it has diluted its oversight of these cases, resulting in a dramatic increase in repeated chapter 11 filings. This, Professor LoPucki argues, is evidence of...

This paper ultimately seeks to promote a discussion that would have ideally been held before the safe harbors – defined as the provisions that allow market participants to ignore the core provisions of the Bankruptcy Code and other insolvency laws – were adopted by legislatures throughout...

In the Fall of 2008, Lehman Brothers had a $35 trillion derivatives portfolio, representing about 5% of the worldwide derivatives market. It was a party to approximately one million trades, under more than 6,000 ISDA master agreements.Lehman's derivatives were not the direct cause of its...

For almost as long as there have been bankruptcy laws, there have been complaints that the primary beneficiaries of these laws are insiders who administer the bankruptcy system. In recent decades, this line of criticism has carried with it an implicit criticism of bankruptcy courts, who are...

This comment letter was recently submitted to the FDIC in response to their Single Point of Entry (SPOE) Strategy for implementing Dodd Frank's Orderly Liquidation Authority (Federal Register/Vol. 78, No. 243).In the comment letter, I describe SPOE as a promising first start, but urge the agency...