Chapter 11 - Tough choices confront trade creditors when a retailer faces bankruptcy

Dan A Lowenthal. Partner and specialist attorney,
Patterson Belknap, Webb & Tyler LLP.

Following the inquiry into the performance of ASIC, the Senate Economics Reference Committee released its report in June 2014. Among other things the committee recommended that government instigate a review of current insolvency laws.

Recommendation 61 of the Senate report called for the review to look at the potential for incorporating elements of America's Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganisation provisions down under.

The government's new assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg told SiN through a spokesman this week that those recommendations will be incorporated into the government's overall response to the findings of the Murray Financial System Inquiry, which is currently subject to a period of consultation with submissions closing on March 31, 2015.

Regardless of when we learn what recommendations have been accepted, talk of applying America's Chapter 11 reconstruction provisions to Australia's insolvency regime is recurrent and will likely persist as long as flaws in the existing legislation periodically throw up problematic outcomes.

Every shockingly expensive insolvency that seems to provide no return for creditors whilst compensating appointees handsomely provides Chapter 11's proponents with another justification for calls to embrace the American way which, in the end, largely sidelines insolvency practitioners and puts lawyers in the box seat.

In the interests of sustaining debate around significant areas of insolvency reform, SiN presents the following piece by New York-based bankruptcy attorney Daniel A. Lowenthal, reprinted with permission from the October 2014 issue of the Journal of Corporate Renewal, published by the Turnaround Management Association.