By Bradley Purcell, Justin Sabin, and Jamila Willis, Bryan Cave LLP
In today’s economic climate, restructuring activity is at a lull. Out-of-court solutions are attractive to financially distressed companies – they avoid the delay, the costs and the uncertainty of formal bankruptcy cases. Indeed, for these very reasons, cooperation between creditors and debtors is common and often encouraged by bankruptcy courts.
Though the Bankruptcy Code contemplates participation by committees of creditors and the goal of maximizing creditor recoveries, a string of recent opinions from the Eleventh Circuit casts doubt on the ability of creditors to lawfully coordinate in their pre-petition negotiations with debtors. In CompuCredit Holdings Corp. v. Akanthos Capital Mgmt., LLC, 916 F. Supp. 2d 1326 (N.D. Ga. 2011), a debtor brought suit against creditors who attempted collective negotiation, alleging violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits anti-competitive behavior. The Eleventh Circuit’s en banc panel split evenly on whether CompuCredit had an antitrust claim under the Sherman Act based on the creditors’ collective conduct.
While this doesn’t change the bankruptcy landscape, it creates uncertainty in pre-petition negotiations and out-of-court workouts. An aggressive obligor may use the Eleventh Circuit’s en banc ruling and relevant antitrust laws to impede collective, pre-petition negotiation of creditors and quell negotiations and actions by pre-petition or informal committees of creditors.
The full discussion can be found here.