Creative Destruction and an Inevitable Fall: What Can We Learn From the Penthouse Magazine Bankruptcy? Penthouse International, publisher of Penthouse Magazine, sold for $11.2 million in June of 2018. The company was worth about $700 million (adjusted for inflation) at its height. The latest Penthouse Magazine bankruptcy highlights just how far Penthouse has fallen, and what lessons can be learned regarding bankruptcy in general. The New Owner The buyer was WGCZ, which also owns XVideos.com and Bangbros.com. XVideos, in turn, functions as an aggregator (just as YouTube is an aggregator […]

Two Decisions that Clarify “Receipt” of Goods in Administrative Expense Claims   Section 503(b)(9) of the Bankruptcy Code1 allows a creditor an administrative expense claim (i.e., a claim with payment priority over other pre-bankruptcy claims) for the value of goods that the debtor “received” within 20 days before filing for bankruptcy. But what precisely does “received” mean in this context?  Suppose the parties agree that shipments will be free on board (“FOB”) at the origin, or the shipping point. Then, the buyer files for bankruptcy. Does the seller have an […]

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. 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, these claims […]

If you are already familiar with the Life Partners Holdings debacle, you may think that the term “Life Partners” should stand for Brian Pardo and his partners in crime who ran that notorious company serving life sentences (instead of just paying massive fines and having some of their assets seized). Such criminals’ loss of liberty may have satisfied justice in a way, but the investors in this Ponzi-like scheme really need to get their money back, or at least as much as possible. With the November 1, 2016 plan confirmation in the […]

A written tour of business bankruptcy and its alternatives We started this series (click here to start reading from the beginning) with a broad overview of business bankruptcy but our last several installments have focused on one small, albeit important, aspect- the automatic stay.  We’ve heard from a number of readers that they would like to read more about the proverbial forest, rather than just the automatic stay tree.  And, so, with this installment we pan the camera back to explain a concept that is at play throughout a bankruptcy […]