Arkansas

Sponsored by the ABI's Asset Sales and Ethics and Professional Compensation Committees

This webinar will discuss ethical issues professionals may face in asset sales and weave in some real life stories from previous deals our panelists have been involved with. Topics to be addressed include collusion, confidentiality, and fiduciary responsibility.

This session includes a panel discussion of the unique issues and challenges involved with demonstrating plan feasibility during our current pandemic economy. The panelists will also discuss how bankruptcy courts have dealt with the issues thus far, and how debtors can make their best cases before the court.

We often forget that what we say and how we say it can signal more than we intended. One of the primary ways in which "what we say"/"how we say it" creates such signals is with the wording of time entries, whether or not those time entries are ever reviewed by a bankruptcy court. Clients read bills, too, so if one wants to communicate that their work was valuable and efficiently performed, the fable of Goldilocks comes to mind: The time entries need to be "just right." When they're not, clients and courts can draw conclusions that we never intended them to draw.

This panel will focus on Congress’s new foray into streamlining small business reorganizations under the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019, as amended by the CARES Act of 2020. The panelists will examine similarities and differences between subchapter V and traditional chapter 11 reorganization, debtor eligibility, and the role of the newly created position of subchapter V trustee. The panelists will then examine early decisions on these issues from bankruptcy courts around the country.

On January 14, 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton that the mere retention of estate property after the filing of a bankruptcy petition does not violate 11 U.S.C. § 362(a)(3), which operates as a “stay” of “any act” to “exercise control” over the property of the estate. ABI Editor-at-Large Bill Rochelle will host a discussion with two leading bankruptcy academics who filed amicus briefs in the case, Profs.