Author: Stephen D. Adams*
[This week the Roundtable looks at the Chapter 14 proposal in the Senate. This post provides an overview of Chapter 14 as background to Bruce Grohsgal’s thoughtful piece from the ABI Journal available here.]
The Taxpayer Protection and Responsible Resolution Act of 2014 (S. 1861), commonly known as “Chapter 14”, aims to “end ‘too big to fail’ by repealing Dodd-Frank’s Title II” and “replacing it with a bankruptcy process” capable of safely resolving a Systemically Important Financial Institution.
The Chapter 14 proposal envisions a number of changes to the bankruptcy process, grouped into a new bankruptcy chapter (hence “Chapter 14”, a previously unused chapter) that would be available to bank holding companies. Chapter 14 would be run by a special group of financially experienced district judges, could allow for the FDIC to be appointed as trustee, and would have no period of plan exclusivity. In order to effect a quick sale similar to the FDIC’s single point of entry strategy for Title II, the Senate bill would add a two-day stay to bankruptcy’s swap safe harbors to give the trustee a chance to transfer the entire swap portfolio to a new company that is solvent. Repos, however, are treated like secured debt, but with the ability to immediately sell off high quality collateral (though not non-agency Mortgage-Backed Securities).
The Senate Bill draws on work from the Hoover Institution’s Resolution Project that proposed the original Chapter 14 in 2009 and 2010 and updated it recently.
Documents related to the original Chapter 14 proposal work, including proponents’ descriptions of the case for a new Chapter 14, can be found here. The text of S. 1861 can be found here. Professor Thomas Jackson’s Congressional testimony about Chapter 14 in 2014 can be found here.
*Editor, Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable, and Research Director, Harvard Law School Bankruptcy and Corporate Restructuring Project.
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