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Abstract: At the time that Enron filed for bankruptcy, it had substantial assets, thousands of creditors, an opaque capital structure, and more than a whiff of fraud. By the traditional account, Enron is a prototypical example of a firm with problems that a law of corporate reorganizations is designed to solve. Like the 19th century receiverships of the great railroads, the reorganization of Enron could have allowed creditors and others to negotiate with each other and find a way to preserve the value of the firm as a going concern at the same time misdeeds are uncovered and losses are allocated among the different players. Negotiations aimed at preserving Enron's value as a going concern never took place, however. As is increasingly the case in large Chapter 11s, Enron's assets were sold quickly, most within a few weeks or months of the filing. The decision as to how to deploy Enron's assets lay not in the court but in the new owners. After selling the assets, the bankruptcy court quickly turned to what courts do best - sorting out complex and perhaps conflicting legal entitlements. This pattern of a prompt sale followed by litigation over the distribution of the proceeds reflects a dramatic change in large firm bankruptcy practice. It suggests that we should no longer think of Chapter 11 as a collective forum in which the interested parties gather to bargain over the fate of the firm.
Abstract: The law of corporate reorganizations is conventionally justified as a way to preserve a firm's going-concern value: Specialized assets in a particular firm are worth more together in that firm than anywhere else. This paper shows that this notion is mistaken. Its flaw is that it lacks a well-developed understanding of the nature of a firm. Initially, it is easy to confuse size with specialization and overstate the extent to which assets are dedicated to a particular enterprise. Even when such dedicated assets exist, they often do not need to stay in the same firm. As Coase taught us, as the costs of contracting go down, so too does the value of keeping assets in a particular firm. But even when specialized assets must be kept inside a firm, two other forces limit the need for a traditional law of corporate reorganizations. Capital structures are increasingly designed with financial distress in mind. For these firms, control rights shift from one set of investors to another as the firm encounters difficulty. Such firms either never file for bankruptcy, or, if they do, it is only to vindicate the pre-determined allocation of control rights. Even where control rights are not sensibly allocated, a quick sale of the firm restores order. When firms can be sold as going concerns, the need for the traditional negotiated plan of reorganization disappears. The vast majority of firms in financial distress never enter bankruptcy. Today the Chapter 11 of a large firm is an auction of the assets, followed by litigation over the proceeds. To the extent we understand the law of corporate reorganizations as providing a collective forum in which creditors and their common debtor fashion a future for a firm that would otherwise be torn apart by financial distress, we may safely conclude that its era has come to an end.
corporate reorganization, firm valuation, Chapter 11
Abstract: Until the firm is sold or a plan of reorganization is confirmed, Chapter 11 entrusts a judge with the decision of whether to keep a firm as a going concern or to shut it down. The judge revisits this liquidation decision multiple times. The key is to make the correct decision at the optimal time. This paper models this decision as the exercise of a real option and shows that it depends critically on particular types of information about the firm and its industry. Liquidations take place too soon if we merely compare the liquidation value of the assets with the expected earnings of the firm. Moreover, existing law undermines effective decisionmaking. Even though the judge makes the liquidation decision, a number of rules prevent the judge from controlling the timing of the decision, and those who do control it lack the incentive to ensure it is made at the optimal time. The paper introduces a framework that can illuminate many areas of law, such as summary judgment motions, parole, and agency rule making.
Abstract: There is no more sacred tenet of corporate law than the one stating that corporate directors owe a fiduciary duty to shareholders. We argue that while this rule has not yet generated seriously wrongheaded outcomes, it is an "almost right" principle that should be abandoned before it does. As a threshold matter, we show the notion of special duties owed to shareholders is plainly inconsistent with everyday business decisions and corporate law. Firms can take and do take actions that are inconsistent with those of a fiduciary and that favor creditors at the expense of shareholders, despite supposedly trumping fiduciary duties owed to the latter. A bankruptcy filing is the most obvious of these. The recent cases in Delaware over fiduciary duties in the "zone of insolvency" demonstrate how the attempt to delineate clearly what duties are owed to different investors in a firm is doomed to fail. Using Credit Lyonnais and its predecessor Central Ice Cream, we show how courts are attuned to the problem of conflicting interests among different investors, but are not likely to create efficient rules by using labels like "fiduciary duties" and applying them to shareholders sometimes and creditors other times. We offer two potential replacements for the shareholder fiduciary duty doctrine. The most familiar for corporate scholars and practitioners is the idea of fiduciary duties being owed to the firm as a whole, coupled with a strong business judgment rule. Although we think this is superior to the existing rule, we show how this principle itself may be wanting in some important cases. In venture capital transactions, for one, the ex ante bargain appears to give certain investors the right to take actions in bad states of the world that may destroy firm value in order to create incentives for managers to avoid those bad states. Courts disrupting these deals in the name of fiduciary duties may be upsetting well struck bargains. We therefore set out an alternative paradigm, one in which no fiduciary duties exist at all, and directors face liability for their decisions (other than for neglect or surreptitious self-dealing) only if they violate a contractual obligation owed a shareholder, creditor, or other investor. We conclude by showing how separating corporate law from conceptions of duty brings needed clarity to the often-litigated issue of disclosure duties. The problem, we suggest, is largely contractual, and in setting the default rules the focus should be on the ability of parties to opt outor opt in.
Abstract: Modern Chapter 11 places control decisions in the hands of the bankruptcy judge and insists on rigid adherence to absolute priority in all cases. In both respects, modern Chapter 11 departs sharply from the equity receivership. The equity receivership governed the reorganization of railroads and other large firms in the 19th Century, and it was fashioned in a way that strongly suggests that it vindicated the creditors' bargain. This paper suggests that, when a speedy auction of the firm is not possible, these twin principles of the equity receivership continue to make sense. When the managers and shareholders cannot be easily separated, control rights should lie in the hands of someone whose loyalties are aligned with the creditors, but the reorganization itself should not affect the value of the managers' equity interest. To use the language of the equity receivership, the "relative priority" of their interests should be preserved. The focus of modern scholarship on the absolute priority rule neglects the question of who controls the assets during the reorganization. It also fails to take account of the role that existing manager/shareholders will play in firms that possess going concern value and cannot be resold in the market. In this environment, the absolute priority rule triggers costly renegotiations that may yield no off-setting advantages over the relative priority rule.
Chapter 11, bankruptcy, equity receivership, reorganization
Abstract: This paper shows that the dynamics of Chapter 11 turn dramatically on the size of the business. The vast majority of the assets administered in Chapter 11 are concentrated in a handful of large cases, but most of the businesses in Chapter 11 are small, and the smaller the business, the smaller the distribution to general unsecured creditors. For businesses with assets above $5 million, unsecured creditors typically collect half of what they are owed. Where the business's assets are worth less than $200,000, ordinary general creditors usually recover nothing. In the typical small Chapter 11 case, the tax collector is the central figure. In small business bankruptcies, priority tax liabilities are the largest unsecured liabilities of the business. Tax obligations are entitled to priority and are obligations of both the corporation and those who run it. Given the large shadow tax claims cast over small Chapter 11 reorganizations, accounts of small Chapter 11 must focus squarely on them.
bankruptcy, creditors, Chapter 11
Abstract: Traditional approaches to corporate governance focus exclusively on shareholders and neglect the large and growing role of creditors. Today's creditors craft elaborate covenants that give them a large role in the affairs of the corporation. While they do not exercise their rights in sunny times when things are going well, these are not the times that matter most. When a business stumbles, creditors typically enjoy powers that public shareholders never have, such as the ability to replace the managers and install those more to their liking. Creditors exercise these powers even when the business is far from being insolvent and continues to pay its debts. Bankruptcy provides no sanctuary as senior lenders ensure that their powers either go unchecked or are enhanced. The powers that modern lenders wield rival in importance the hostile takeover in disciplining poor or underperforming managers. This essay explores these powers and begins the task of integrating this lever of corporate governance into the modern account of corporate law.
Abstract: In The End of Bankruptcy we detailed the forces that have rendered obsolete traditional conceptions of corporate reorganization. In a response to our article, Lynn LoPucki asserts that our paper lacked empirical foundation. In this response, we draw on LoPucki's data set of the reorganization of large, publicly held entities to show the robustness of our claims, both empirical and theoretical. Looking in detail at the firms whose Chapter 11 cases ended in 2002, most of which concluded after we completed our original piece, we find that in over 80% of the cases the assets of the firm were either sold or the bankruptcy proceeding put in place a restructuring plan agreed to before bankruptcy was filed. The remaining firms evince little in the way of going-concern value. Moreover, equityholders are nearly always wiped out, and the board of directors is usually replaced. Today's bankruptcy practice reveals creditors, particularly the senior lenders, in control. They use their powers to remove managers in whom they have lost confidence, replace the board of directors, put the corporation on the auction block and terminate the interest of equityholders. This paper provides further evidence that issues of control rather than priority dominate modern reorganization practice.
Chapter 11, corporate reorganization
Abstract: This empirical study suggests that, far from ensuring assets are put to their best use, Chapter 11 encourages small-business entrepreneurs to remain too long with failed businesses before trying to start (or work for) new ones. Small entrepreneurs open and close a number of businesses over the course of their careers as they search for the business (or employer) that offers the best match with their skills. Chapter 11 delays this matching process and, over this dimension, differs little from rent control and other government policies that encourage socially wasteful lock-in of scarce resources. These costs may not be large, as bankruptcy judges are aware of and guard against them. At the same time, however, few benefits offset these costs. The typical Chapter 11 is a small business that has few, if any, specialized assets. It is organized around the owner-operator's human capital and can be (and usually is) reassembled by the owner at low cost. Other than delay, the outcome of a Chapter 11 case - reorganization or liquidation - has little bearing on a small entrepreneur's career.
Small Business Bankruptcy, Chapter 11, Entrepreneurship, Asset Specificity, Job Search
Abstract: This paper revisits two examples of vertical integration in the early automobile industry: GM and Fisher Body on the one hand and Ford Motor and Keim Mills on the other. The paper shows that asset-specific investment and the fear of hold-up played at best a negligible role. What mattered in the case of GM and Fisher Body was close coordination of assembly operations. In the case of Ford Motor and Keim Mills, vertical integration was an important step (but only one of many) that Henry Ford took to ensure that his production team remained intact. In the case of GM and Fisher Body, GM's decision to coordinate the assembly of Chevrolet components, including car bodies, at multiple locations proved crucial. Shipping complete car bodies and storing them at each Chevrolet assembly plant was expensive and unwieldy. Instead, Fisher Body shipped sheets of stamped metal to assembly plants built at GM's expense adjacent to each new Chevrolet assembly plant. At these plants, Fisher Body coordinated the welding of the sheets into car bodies with Chevrolet's production team. The close coordination of these plant level operations made the activities of Fisher and Chevrolet indistinguishable from most activity that takes place inside a conventional firm. These production efficiencies made vertical integration sensible, but the date of formal legal integration came late and was not itself of great moment. The success of the Model T depended crucially on Henry Ford's ability to keep his production team together. Many team members worked initially for Keim Mills, and Keim became a subsidiary of Ford. But, as in the case of GM and Fisher Body, the formal legal event marking vertical integration of Ford and Keim did not coincide with the important economic events. The members of the Keim Mills team designed the Model T well before vertical integration, and their later contributions came only when they moved from Buffalo to Detroit, something that was independent of and took place after vertical integration. The value of the Model T depended crucially on the members of the team Henry Ford put together, but relatively little on whether, as a legal matter, the Ford Motor Company employed them.
vertical integration, automotive, automobile industry
Abstract: International News Service v. Associated Press held that a wire service had the right to prevent rivals from copying its bulletin. It established the doctrine of misappropriation and justified it on the ground that someone that invests in gathering and disseminating information is entitled to the fruits of its labor. The Supreme Court, however, missed the strong anti-competitive undercurrents in the case. INS and AP were not conventional rivals. The most important AP member (and the person who stood to gain the most from AP's anticompetitive activities) - also owned INS. Far from being about first principles, the case illustrates how common-law reasoning quickly loses its moorings in the absence of a bona fide dispute. The long-recognized failing of the case - that it sets out a principle with no obvious boundaries - was deeply embedded in the facts and illustrates, even in this iconic environment, that the domains of intellectual property and antitrust cannot be easily separated. Portions of this paper are adapted from a chapter to be published in JANE C. GINSBURG AND ROCHELLE C. DREYFUSS, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY STORIES (forthcoming, Foundation Press, 2005).
Misappropriation, network, wire service, intellectual property
Abstract: In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors are entitled to insist upon being paid in full before anyone junior to them receives anything. In practice, however, departures from such "absolute priority" are commonplace. Explaining these deviations has been a central preoccupation of reorganization scholars for decades. By the standard law-and-economics account, deviations from absolute priority arise because well positioned insiders take advantage of cumbersome procedures and inept judges. In this paper, we suggest that a far simpler and more benign force dominates bargaining in reorganization cases. "Deviations" from absolute priority are inevitable even in a world completely committed to respecting priority as long as asset values are uncertain. Uncertainty accompanies any valuation procedure. Bargaining in corporate reorganizations takes place in the shadow of this uncertainty, and standard models of litigation and settlement show that valuation uncertainty alone can explain many of the departures from absolute priority we see in large corporate reorganizations. Even where rational and well informed senior investors expect the absolute priority rule to be strictly enforced, they must account for the uncertainty associated with any valuation. The possibility of an unexpectedly high appraisal will cause them to offer apparently out-of-the-money junior investors contingent interests in the reorganized business. The debate over absolute priority, the central principle of modern corporate reorganization law, has been misdirected for decades. It has failed to recognize that a substantive rule of absolute priority does not lead to an absolute priority outcome. A coherent account of absolute priority must incorporate relative priority. It must take account of the option value implicit in the junior investors' right to insist on an appraisal.
Chapter 11, corporate reorganizations, absolute priority, relative priority, valuation
Abstract: Perhaps within the next decade, the technology of "reanimation" will allow film producers to cast any actor, living or dead, in any role. In this respect, there will soon be no difference between Humphrey Bogart and Mickey Mouse. Soon a sequel to the Maltese Falcon can star Bogart as he was in 1940. The legal rules that will operate in this environment are still being shaped. The discussion to date has centered on the need to ensure that intellectual property rights are shaped in such a way that preserves a large public domain. Such rights should not limit the ability of new artists and producers to create new work. This paper suggests that the existing debate misses the mark. Legal rules ought to take account of the way in which our cultural icons are both finite and privately owned. They need to be shepherded. Rights of publicity and other intellectual property rights are like any other scarce resource. We count on those who own them to manage them well. As with every property regime, what matters most is for rights to be defined clearly and their transfer easy.
Abstract: Section 1129(b) of the Bankruptcy Code gives each class of unsecured claims the right to insist that a reorganization plan be "fair and equitable" and to prevent those junior to them from receiving "property" on account of their old interests. The Bankruptcy Code is often said to embrace a rule of absolute priority, but if it does so, it is only through these restrictions. Hence, the meaning of the words "fair and equitable" and "property" is the terrain on which priority battles are contested. One must choose among different methods of statutory interpretation. One can derive priority rules by examining the judicial evolution of the words "fair and equitable" before they were incorporated into the 1978 Bankruptcy Reform Act. Alternatively, one can look to the word "property," and derive priority rules by trying to define this word. Opinions in the most recent Supreme Court case on this issue, 203 N. LaSalle, exemplify these competing approaches. Using these opinions as its starting point, this paper explores the way in which priority rules in bankruptcy have evolved over time and shows how the absolute priority rule is harder to derive from the statute and hence more contingent, positively and normatively, than commonly supposed.
Abstract: In large Chapter 11 cases, the prototypical creditor is no longer a small player holding a claim much like everyone else’s, but rather a distressed debt professional advancing her own agenda. Secured creditors are more pervasive and enjoy much more control than they had even a decade ago. Moreover, financial innovation has dramatically increased the complexity of each investor's position. As a result of these and other changes, the legal system faces today a challenge that is much like assembling a city block that has been broken up into many parcels. There exists an anti-commons problem, a world in which ownership interests are fragmented and conflicting. This is quite at odds with the standard account of Chapter 11 - that it solves a tragedy of the commons, the collective action problem that exists when general creditors share numerous dispersed, but otherwise similar, interests. This paper draws on the lessons of cooperative game theory to show how in combination these recent changes are toxic. They undermine the coalition formation process that is a foundational assumption of Chapter 11.
Abstract: Agency costs dominate academic thinking about corporate governance. The central challenge is to devise legal rules to align the interests of the managers (the agents) with those of the shareholders (the principals). This preoccupation is misplaced. Whether it is finding a baby-sitter or a dean, the challenge of hiring the right person dwarfs the challenge of aligning that person's incentives. The central task for corporate governance - its Prime Directive - is to ensure that the right person is running the business. In this essay, we suggest that the challenge of aligning the managers' incentives has been drastically overstated and the way in which legal rules affect hiring (and firing) decisions has been too often ignored. Putting the emphasis on agency costs may lead to rules that slight what matters most. The current preoccupation with executive compensation runs the risk of inducing the board to worry more about the details of the employment contract rather than selecting the best person in the first instance. More important, the law can play an important role ensuring bad managers are fired. Once hired, all managers need to be mentored, monitored and, when necessary, replaced. There is little to suggest that a single entity is well-situated to perform all three. There is tension between the roles of confidant and policeman. Here, debt contracts play a crucial and largely neglected role. Covenants in debt contracts can insure that underperforming managers are called to task. Private debt holders' role in monitoring a business and ensuring that underperforming managers are replaced may be as important as the market for corporate control.
Abstract: Agency costs dominate academic thinking about corporate governance. The central challenge is to devise legal rules to align the interests of the managers (the agents) with those of the shareholders (the principals). This preoccupation is misplaced. Whether it is finding a babysitter or a dean, the challenge of hiring the right person dwarfs the challenge of aligning that person's incentives. The central task for corporate governance - its Prime Directive - is to ensure that the right person is running the business. In this essay, we suggest that the challenge of aligning the managers' incentives has been drastically overstated and the way in which legal rules affect hiring (and firing) decisions has been too often ignored. The current preoccupation with executive compensation runs the risk of inducing the board to worry more about the details of the employment contract rather than selecting the best person in the first instance. More important, the law can play an important role ensuring bad managers are fired. The market for corporate control does this, but debt contracts also play a crucial role, one that has been largely neglected. Covenants in debt contracts can insure that underperforming managers are called to task. Indeed, they may be as important as the market for corporate control.
corporate law, corporate governance, separation of ownership and control, management incentives, executive compensation, corporate control
Abstract: Recent scholarship emphasizes the increasing rarity of trials (adversary proceedings) in bankruptcy cases. We assess the importance of this pattern using data from the Northern District of Illinois. Adversaries are indeed rare - they are absent from the vast majority of bankruptcy cases - but their rarity tells us little that is meaningful about the bankruptcy process. They tend to be clustered in a tiny number of cases (one percent of bankruptcy cases account for over fifty percent of adversaries). They also focus on a narrow range of issues (objections to discharge in consumer cases; recovery of preferential transfers in business cases). Little has changed since the early 1990s. Although we see a decline in the rate with which adversaries are filed (from six percent of bankruptcy cases in 1993 to about three percent in the late 1990s), the baseline rate was already very low. The decline only tells us that a rare event has become rarer. One temporal change, however, is noteworthy: the average duration of adversaries fell from ten months to 7.5 between 1993 and 2002. This is consistent with recent evidence on the speediness of today's Chapter 11 process. These patterns tell us two things about the bankruptcy process. First, in consumer cases, the persistent rarity of adversaries, even when consumer filings surged during the late 1990s, casts doubt on claims that bankruptcy abuse was prevalent during the late 1990s and early 2000s. If abuse were becoming more prevalent, we should have seen more frequent use of adversaries to contest a debtor's discharge. Second, in corporate cases, adversary proceedings generally address issues, such as preferential transfers, that are orthogonal to the primary concern of Chapter 11 - rehabilitation of the debtor's business. Moreover, when adversaries are brought to attack preferential transfers, the proceedings are often commenced after the court has confirmed a plan of reorganization.
Bankruptcy, trials, adversary proceedings, empirical
Abstract: The bankruptcy forum has become a marketplace for claims. Those who made the loans are far removed from the players that sit at the negotiating table in the modern corporate reorganization. Instead of stock being traded on the floor of an exchange, claims are traded in bankruptcy court. Investors become residual owners of firms outside of bankruptcy by buying stock. Inside of bankruptcy they do it by buying debt. In both cases, it is a world of professional traders, arbitrageurs, and corporate raiders. Long passed is the time when we could usefully debate whether claims-trading in bankruptcy was a good or a bad thing. We should accept that it has become a fundamental feature of bankruptcy. But it is naive to think that this new market, the bankruptcy exchange, should be unregulated. All markets are regulated. Whether one is a merchant who seeks to sell wool in the twelfth century or a farmer who wants to sell grain in the nineteenth, being subject to regulation is inevitable. Simply providing that the market is open on Wednesdays, but not Saturdays, is a form of regulation that works to the advantage of some and to the disadvantage of others. Regulation of the bankruptcy exchange is similarly inescapable. Every decision in the bankruptcy case affects the bankruptcy exchange, for better or worse. Scheduling a date for a cramdown hearing has the effect of putting an exercise date on an option contract. Every decision a bankruptcy judge affects trading on the bankruptcy exchange - whether she wants it to or not. The question is never whether there should be regulation, but rather what form it should take. This paper reviews the principles that should be at work in regulating the bankruptcy exchange.
Abstract: Holmes’s “bad man” view of the common law and his effort to capture contractual liability as option to perform or pay damages grew out of a debate he was having with another legal scholar in an exchange of letters that has largely been forgotten. Holmes’s opponent in this debate — Edward Avery Harriman — was in many respects a kindred spirit, someone who, like Holmes, was a positivist trying to fashion an objective account of the law of contract. Their disagreement was not so much about the role that morals and ethics ought to play in the law of contract, but rather about whether Harriman’s own theory — one that distinguished between primary and secondary obligations — provided the best explanation of the law of contract. The essay recaptures the contours of the debate and reassesses Harriman’s alternative theory of contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "Path of the Law"
Abstract: When a firm encounters financial distress, there is a significant possibility that, at some point, the firm itself should be shut down and its assets put to a better use. But Chapter 11 and indeed all market-mimicking reorganization regimes other than a speedy auction entrust the shutdown decision to a bankruptcy judge who lacks information and expertise, as well as the ability to control the timing of her decisions. Understanding the costs of entrusting the shutdown decision to a bankruptcy judge is central to assessing any law of corporate reorganizations. This paper models the shutdown decision as the exercise of a real option. The model suggests that the shutdown decision may loom so large in the early parts of the bankruptcy case that it erases any significant difference between Chapter 11 and many alternative market-mimicking regimes. All these regimes take more time than mandatory auctions and thus increase the cost of taking the shutdown decision away from a market actor. Moreover, the real option itself gives parties an incentive to withhold information. Only a system of mandatory auctions both limits the amount of time the shutdown option resides with an inexpert decisionmaker and forces insiders to give that decisionmaker sufficient information to value the option while it is in her hands.
Abstract: Fraudulent transfer law in the United States provides a safety net for corporate creditors. It prohibits insolvent debtors from making transfers or incurring obligations for less than reasonably equivalent value. Moreover, it reaches any transaction that lacks economic substance and that is designed merely to make it hard for creditors to monitor the debtor. The distinctive shape of fraudulent transfer law in the United States is not replicated in the other common law or in civil law jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the functions it performs are likely to be part of any legal regime that protects the rights of creditors and other investors.
fraudulent transfer, fraudulent conveyance, legal capital, leveraged buyout, dividend
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