Reporting from Reuters indicates that the German government plans to relax certain corporate insolvency rules in response to rising energy costs so that companies with financially sound business plans can avoid being required to file for protection under Germany’s insolvency laws. [Reuters; Sept. 9, 2022]

Bloomberg reports that the United States Court of Appeals for

Perhaps not unexpectedly, on February 25, 2021, a New York bankruptcy court dismissed the involuntary bankruptcy petition brought earlier in the month by three student loan borrowers against Navient Solutions (see our prior post on the borrowers’ petition here).  Navient is the student loan servicing arm of Navient Corporation, one of the world’s largest student loan-originators.

Continue Reading Navient Case Dismissed Confirming High Bar to Involuntary Bankruptcy Petitions

On February 8, 2021, three student loan borrowers filed an involuntary petition against Navient Solutions LLC in New York bankruptcy court seeking to force Navient into bankruptcy.[1]  Navient Solutions is the loan servicing arm of Navient Corporation, a student loan originator which manages approximately $300 billion in student loan debt for more than 12 million borrowers.  Involuntary petitions like the one instituted by the borrowers here are somewhat rare, at least in the case of larger companies like Navient, and the Bankruptcy Code provides special procedural rules, discussed below, which are designed in part to protect against potential abuses.

Continue Reading Navient Solutions & The High Bar to Involuntary Bankruptcy Petitions

CEC Entertainment, the parent company of kid-friendly and iconic “dinnertainment” restaurant and arcade chain—Chuck E. Cheese—sought and received Bankruptcy Court approval for three very unique settlement agreements, earlier this year, under which it will pay $2.3 million to three vendors to destroy roughly seven BILLION prize tickets –  i.e.,  enough tickets to fill approximately 65 forty-foot cargo shipping containers.1 The backlog was caused by Chuck E. Cheese placing orders for tickets at pre-COVID utilization rates, the resulting pandemic and rapid fallout in sales, and, most generally, Chuck E. Cheese’s efforts to transition from physical tickets to contactless transactions, like “e-Tickets.”2

Continue Reading The Costs of Destruction: Bankruptcy Court Authorizes Chuck E. Cheese to Spend Millions on Destruction of Prize Tickets

Judge James Garrity of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York rejected LatAm Airlines’ approximately $2.4 billion DIP financing arrangement, citing, among other things, concerns over terms of the financing arrangement that would allow certain DIP lenders to swap their debt for shares in the reorganized company at an approximately

Mayer Brown Partners Matthew O’Meara and Sean Scott discussed the impact of the recent news that a New York state court judge denied a preliminary injunction request filed in the Supreme Court of New York by a group of dissenting first-lien lenders, seeking to prevent a borrower, Serta Simmons, and certain first-lien consenting lenders from

As courts across the country deal with scaled back operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, bankruptcy courts in New Jersey and Delaware have issued novel orders to address the impact of the virus on certain debtors.  Last month, debtors in the chapter 11 bankruptcy cases of Modell’s Sporting Goods, Inc. and CraftWorks Parent, LLC each sought and obtained court orders suspending certain case activity which, for all intents and purposes “mothballed” the cases for a certain period of time.

Continue Reading Bankruptcy Courts Address Impact of COVID-19 Coronavirus With Unique Orders

Mayer Brown advised on two transactions – “Restructuring of the Year” in the $1 billion to $10 billion category, and “Chapter 11 Reorganization of the Year” in the $500 million to $1 billion category – that were honored by The M&A Advisor in its 14th Annual Turnaround Awards. The annual awards recognize the leading distressed