Authors: Marshall S. Huebner and Hilary A.E. Dengel, Davis Polk
Being deemed an “insider” has important ramifications for creditors in bankruptcy and can materially impact a creditor’s risk and recovery profile in any case.
In Capmark Financial Group Inc. v. Goldman Sachs Credit Partners L.P. (Capmark), the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York made several positive rulings on key insider status issues favorable to market participants who regularly find themselves, sometimes through affiliated entities, playing multiple roles with respect to a borrower counterparty. Embracing the arguments advanced by the Goldman Sachs lending entities, the court rejected Capmark’s attempts to cast the lenders as “insiders” of Capmark based on an indirect equity interest in Capmark held by funds managed by certain of their affiliates – holding that Capmark failed to allege facts that would show the “extraordinary circumstances” required for veil piercing and stating that participation in an arm’s length transaction as an ordinary commercial lender will not give rise to non-statutory insider status.
The Capmark decision provides comfort and greater certainty to market participants that, absent falling into one of the expressly enumerated categories of insiders under the Bankruptcy Code, insider status should not attach to creditors who neither control a company nor deal with it at less than arm’s length. The case is further discussed here in Capmark: Clarifying Insider Status for Market Participants (ABI Journal, January 2014).
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