This series was started with a broad overview of business bankruptcy, but our last few installments have focused on: unsecured creditors the priority scheme in bankruptcy protecting/collecting your claim In this installment, we draw on our discussion of the priority scheme, with a special focus on super and residual priorities. As previously discussed, not all claims are treated the same.  At its foundation, claims can be divided into two general buckets—secured and unsecured.  If there is collateral securing the claim, it is secured.  If not, it’s unsecured.  However, Congress decided […]

A written tour of business bankruptcy and its alternatives. If you would like to read from the beginning, this series started here with a broad overview of business bankruptcy. Most recently, the series has focused on the automatic stay, where you can find the 30,000-foot view. Or you can find more specific treatment here, here and here. In this installment, we give a crash course from a particular perspective – the unsecured creditor. When a debtor files for bankruptcy, creditors hold different types of claims or interests against the debtor’s estate.  Generally, […]

A written tour of business bankruptcy and its alternatives Our prior installment discussed some of the basic things a secured creditor needs to know about Chapter 11. The automatic stay was one of them.  But, since we like to keep these things short (on the presumption that others also have short attention spans) we didn’t say all we want to say on the topic (in fact, this installment won’t satiate us either and we will continue to explain other aspects of the automatic stay in future installments). For now, we […]

A written tour of business bankruptcy and its alternatives Subsequent installments in this series will cover the concepts touched upon here in more detail.  We think it prudent, if not necessary, to at least throw some basic chapter 11 concepts on the table now, however, since they are so fundamental to any Chapter 11 case- regardless of which side of the table you sit on. The Automatic Stay Commencing a bankruptcy case triggers an “automatic stay,” which, with certain exceptions (carved out by §362(b)), operates as an injunction against actions […]