Outside of bankruptcy, a board of directors' decision to take control rights away from existing shareholders and grant them to another is subject to heightened fiduciary duties. As the sale of control represents a kind of end game, shareholders have one last chance to realize the full value for...

Many have wrestled with too big to fail firms, with the attention predominantly focused on banks, especially the so-called systemically important ones, i.e. SIFI's (“Systematically Important Financial Institutions”). In this Article we look at too big to fail firms. We focus on cases 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...

It is widely believed that big chapter 11 cases are now routinely done by way of a quick 363 sale, followed by a not quite as quick liquidation of the residue of the debtor, along with a distribution of the sale proceeds. Indeed, commentators widely bemoan the fact that debtors arrive in chapter...

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...

The absolute priority rule describes the basic order of payment in bankruptcy. Secured creditors get paid first, unsecured creditors get paid next, and only then do shareholders get paid, if at all. The rule has obtained a kind of unassailable, near scriptural status in the corporate...