Last week, the Wall Street Journal’s Bankruptcy Beat posted several pieces on the causes and consequences of so-called “Chapter 22” repeat bankruptcy filings. In the first three posts of the series, bankruptcy experts offered a range of views on the topic.
In the first post, Harvey Miller, of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, said that increased recidivism in Chapter 11 filings was largely due to distressed debt and securities investors, who effectively gain control of the debtor and its plan formulation process and do all that is necessary to expedite the plan confirmation. Because nobody in this coordinated effort will challenge the plan’s feasibility and because the judge is not well placed to independently investigate, feasibility issues may go unaddressed.
Marshall Huebner, of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, in the second post, noted other factors that could trigger subsequent Chapter 11 filings, including a company’s underestimation of the broader industry’s decline, creditor pressure on the debtor to remain overleveraged, and a debtor’s inability to shed legacy liabilities.
In the third post, Mark Roe, professor at Harvard Law School reasoned that, regardless of the cause, recidivism is both not that common—less than 20% of Chapter 11 debtors—and not that bad of a trade-off if it stems from getting companies through the bankruptcy process quickly, as long as most of them recover and grow. Enforcing a strict zero-tolerance feasibility standard could do more damage to debtors by keeping them in bankruptcy longer.
Visit the Bankruptcy Beat website to see the rest of the experts’ views on Chapter 22 filings.
Visit the HLS Bankruptcy Roundtable’s prior coverage of Ed Altman’s study of the frequency and nature of Chapter 22 filings, posted in June, here.
This summary was drafted by Stephanie Massman (J.D. 2015)