Miss Yesterday's ABI Media Webinar Examining the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Husky International Electronics Inc. v. Ritz? Replay Available!

Miss Yesterday's ABI Media Webinar Examining the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Husky International Electronics Inc. v. Ritz? Replay Available!

ABI Bankruptcy Brief
ABI Bankruptcy Brief

May 19, 2016

 
ABI Bankruptcy Brief
 
 
 
NEWS AND ANALYSIS

Miss Yesterday's ABI Media Webinar Examining the Supreme Court’s Ruling in Husky International Electronics Inc. v. Ritz? Replay Available!

ABI held a media webinar yesterday featuring Dechert LLP's Eric Brunstad and Prof. Anthony Casey of the University of Chicago Law School in a lively discussion with ABI Editor-at-Large Bill Rochelle about the Supreme Court’s ruling in Husky International Electronics Inc. v. Ritz. To watch a replay of the webinar, please click here.

Landlords Are Catching Retail's Cold

The downturn in the retail sector is weighing on the publicly traded real estate investment trusts with heavy exposure to America's retail real estate, including beleaguered mall owners, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday. Shares in North American REITs with a large portion of their investment concentrated in malls are now down 10 percent in the past year, compared with a 6 percent rise across all REITs, according to Bloomberg data. REITs with more exposure to higher-end malls and outlet centers – such as upscale-mall REIT Simon Property Group, whose shares are up 8 percent this year – are faring better than REITs more exposed to older, poorly performing malls. While the pain might be more evident at mall owners, a broad slowdown in sales at brick-and-mortar stores is ultimately a threat to all retail landlords. Retail traffic across all types of retail real estate – including  malls, strip centers, and other shopping areas – has been posting monthly declines of as much as 18 percent in the U.S. and Canada from the year before, according to analysis firm Prodco.
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Learn about the intersection of Article 9 of the UCC and retail bankruptcy as ABI Resident Scholar Prof. Melissa Jacoby talks with Prof. Juliet Moringiello of Widener University Commonwealth Law School on ABI's latest podcast. Moringiello, a former ABI Resident Scholar, provides her perspective on recent retail bankruptcy issues, including consignment arrangements in the ongoing Sports Authority case. Click here to listen.

Analysis: Litigation Financing Attracts New Set of Investors

Rather than betting on one-off lawsuits, current commercial litigation funders are scaling up and backing large portfolios of cases to deploy money faster and create more consistent returns for their own investors, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Pension funds, university endowments, family offices and others have collectively pumped more than a billion dollars into the sector in recent years. In a major example of the industry’s changing focus, Burford Capital LLC said earlier this year in public filings that it provided $100 million to an unnamed global law firm, supported by a portfolio of existing cases. The size of the deal shocked the staid legal industry, which questioned whether the move flouts a ban in the U.S. on outside investors in law firms. Burford says that the money isn’t equity in a law firm, but rather an alternative type of financing that is only paid back if the litigation results in a payday. Even so, the deal could be the first sign of cracks in the long-held prohibition against outsiders taking a stake in the legal profession.
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Researchers Examine What Would Happen to Your Data if the Tech Bubble Bursts

Researchers at Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity teased out five different scenarios for if the tech bubble were to burst in a study released last month, The Atlantic reported on Friday. Desperate companies will resort, if they can, to selling the detailed data they’ve meticulously collected about their users — whether it’s personally identifiable information, data about preferences, habits and hobbies, or national-security files, according to the study. Most privacy policies that promise not to sell user data include a caveat in case of bankruptcy or sale. In fact, a New York Times analysis of the top 100 websites in the U.S. last year found that 85 of them include clauses in their privacy policies like this one from Facebook: “If the ownership or control of all or part of our Services or their assets changes, we may transfer your information to the new owner.” Even without doomsday scenarios, there’s already evidence of what the demise of a data-rich company would look like. When RadioShack filed for bankruptcy last year, one of the assets it put up for sale was its meticulously compiled database of information on millions of its customers. This set off a scramble of opposition from all sides: AT&T and Apple claimed to be the rightful owner of some of the data, and officials in a handful of states warned that the sale could violate state laws. The Federal Trade Commission stepped in, too, suggesting to a judge that RadioShack should only be able to sell the data to a company “substantially in the same line of business,” and that the buyer should be bound by the same privacy policy that was in place when consumers shared their personal data with RadioShack.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
ABI Live Webinar: “Labor Issues in Coal Cases” June 2, 2016 Online Webinar
Central States Bankruptcy Workshop June 16-19, 2016 Geneva, Wisc.
Northeast Consumer Forum July 14-16, 2016 Bretton Woods, N.H.
Northeast Bankruptcy Conference July 14-17, 2016 Bretton Woods, N.H.
Southeast Bankruptcy Workshop July 21-24, 2016 Amelia Island, Fla.
Mid-Atlantic Bankruptcy Workshop August 4-6, 2016 Cambridge, Md.
Midwest Regional Bankruptcy Seminar August 18-19, 2016 Cincinnati, Ohio
Southwest Bankruptcy Conference September 8-10, 2016 Las Vegas, Nevada
Click here for Full calendar
BLOG EXCHANGE

New on ABI’s Bankruptcy Blog Exchange: PROMESA Observations
Prof. Stephen Lubben provides a quick analysis on the CreditSlips blog of the new draft of the "Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stabilization Act."

Click here to read the bill summary prepared by the House Committee on Natural Resources. 

To see the full text of the bill (H.R. 5278) as introduced yesterday, please click here.

For further analysis of Puerto Rico's debt crisis, be sure to visit ABI's "Puerto Rico in Distress" webpage.

To read more on this blog and all others on the ABI Blog Exchange, please click here.

 
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