Limiting Credit Bidding in Section 363 Bankruptcy Sales Post-In Re Aéropostale, Inc.

Chilled Credit Bidding and the Section 363 Sale Section 363(k) of the Bankruptcy Code (the “Code”) allows a secured creditor to bid at a section 363 sale and use the amount of their claim to offset the purchase price at the sale, called “credit bidding.” A court may limit this right “for cause.” The “for cause” standard is not defined in the Code, and disagreement exists as to what constitutes “for cause.” Traditional bases for limiting credit bidding include challenges related to the lien itself, failure to correctly assert the […]

Kuney’s Corner: The Secured Creditor’s Counter Strike – Section 1111(b) Election

Section 1111(b) Election: A Countermeasure for Undersecured, Secured Creditors   Mathew 5:29 – And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. In a previous article about cram downs, in which a debtor can take steps to confirm a Chapter 11 plan despite rejection from creditors, I referred briefly to an undersecured, secured creditor’s countermeasure: the section 1111(b)(2) election. By […]

Kuney’s Corner – Giving Secured Creditor Substitute Collateral in a Chapter 11 Cramdown

Pacifying a Hostile Lender with a Motion to Substitute Collateral  Can a Chapter 11 debtor confirm a plan that gives a hostile secured creditor a lien on an orange as a substitute, in essence, for the secured creditor’s lien on an apple that the debtor wants to keep and use?1 Yes, a motion to substitute collateral is valid if the value of the new lien meets the “indubitable equivalent” test with the value of the original lien. Substitute Collateral in Apples and Oranges  Assume that the land-rich but cash-poor Chapter […]

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 In our past few installments we’ve been approaching our topic in a more or less chronological manner, explaining what generally happens first, second, third, and so on. We think it useful to switch convention and spend this and the next few installments talking about things from the perspective of specific players. This time, we focus on the secured creditor. What/who is a secured creditor?  Examples include (there are other possibilities): The holder of a real estate mortgage A bank with a […]