By James H. M. Sprayregen, Christopher T. Greco, and Neal Paul Donnelly, Kirkland & Ellis
Setting compensation for senior management can be among the most contentious issues facing companies reorganizing under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. Corporate debtors argue that such compensation—often in the form of base salary, bonuses, or stock of the reorganized company—helps retain and incentivize management, whose services are believed necessary to achieve a successful reorganization. Creditors, by contrast, may be loath to support compensation packages that they perceive as enriching the very managers who led the company into bankruptcy.
This tension over management compensation, though long present in corporate bankruptcy cases, has been more pronounced since 2005, when the US Congress added Section 503(c) to the Bankruptcy Code. Section 503(c) limits bankrupt companies’ freedom to give management retention bonuses, severance payments, or other ancillary compensation. For instance, under the current regime, a company cannot pay managers retention bonuses unless it proves to a bankruptcy court that the managers both provide essential services to the reorganizing business and that they have alternative job offers in hand. Even then, the Bankruptcy Code caps the amount of the retention bonuses. Severance payments to managers are similarly restricted by Section 503(c).…Read more here.
[This article first appeared in the March 2013 issue of Financier Worldwide magazine. Copyright Financier Worldwide 2014 all rights reserved. Reprinted with publishers permission. www.financierworldwide.com]
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