By Bruce A. Markell (Northwestern University Law School)
Cramdown is the confirmation of a plan of reorganization over the dissent of an entire class of creditors. Bankruptcy’s absolute priority rule permits such confirmation only if the dissenting class is paid in full, or if no junior class receives anything. “Paid in full,” however, does not require payment in cash. It can consist of intangible promises to pay money that banks, investors, and markets regularly value.
Whether this market value can precisely be transferred to cramdown has vexed many. This Article, “Fair Equivalents and Market Prices,” surveys the doctrinal background of such valuations and devises three short apothegms that can synthesize the history and doctrine under these phrases: “don’t pay too little”; “don’t pay too much”; and “don’t expect precision.”
Against this background, debates arose recently when a New York bankruptcy court applied a chapter 13 case, Till v. SCS Credit Corp., to a large corporate cramdown in In re MPM Silicones, LLC (“Momentive”). Given the legislative history and precedents in the cramdown area, the Article takes the position that Momentive was correct, that it is compatible with the doctrinal roots of cramdown, and that in the future, courts should resist using pure market-based valuations in cramdown calculations.
This article recently appeared in the Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal (2016). The Roundtable has also recently posted Anthony Casey’s related article from the same issue, “Bankruptcy’s Endowment Effect.”