Ken Adams, Professor Adrian Walters, and I recently collaborated on an article about the ubiquitous “termination on bankruptcy” or ipso facto clauses in contracts. The article was just published by the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section in its online publication, Business Law Today. It’s titled “Termination-On-Bankruptcy
insolvency
Assignments For The Benefit Of Creditors: Simple As ABC?
Companies in financial trouble are often forced to liquidate their assets to pay creditors. While a Chapter 11 bankruptcy sometimes makes the most sense, other times a Chapter 7 bankruptcy is required, and in still other situations a corporate dissolution may be best. This post examines another of the options, the assignment for the benefit of creditors…
Are “Termination On Bankruptcy” Contract Clauses Enforceable?
Practically every contract has a provision that makes the bankruptcy or insolvency of one contracting party a trigger for the other party to terminate the contract. These are standard fare and rarely negotiated unless they also include a provision for the reversion back of ownership of property, often intellectual property, upon bankruptcy or insolvency. This post takes a…
Delaware Supreme Court Issues Long-Awaited Decision In Deepening Insolvency Case
On August 14, 2007, the Delaware Supreme Court, sitting en Banc and following oral argument, issued its decision in the Trenwick America Litigation Trust v. Billet deepening insolvency case. Rather than write its own opinion, the Delaware Supreme Court released a two-page order affirming Vice Chancellor Strine’s August 10, 2006 Chancery Court decision "on the basis…
English Translation Of China’s New Enterprise Bankruptcy Law Is Now Available
On June 1, 2007, China’s new Enterprise Bankruptcy Law took effect. Years in the drafting, it represents a major change from the prior law. If implemented consistently throughout China, the new law may give foreign creditors more protection than they have received in the past.
Covering twelve chapters and 136 articles, the new law is designed to create…
Chapter 15: The Bankruptcy Code’s New Cross-Border Insolvency Rules
Chris Laughton, a UK insolvency practitioner and publisher of InsolvencyBlog.com, has a number of recent posts on the adoption in the UK of the Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (“Model Law”), a 1997 effort by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (“UNCITRAL”). That got me thinking that I should post something on the recent…