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Bankruptcy Litigation

Split Second Circuit Narrows Bankruptcy Code’s Settlement Payment Safe Harbor

The majority was sensibly concerned with the possible structuring of leveraged buyouts by artful counsel who would use a financial institution as a “mere conduit” to exploit the Code’s safe harbor.

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Two streams of payments to shareholders in a leveraged buyout (LBO), totaling $4 million (Certificate Transfers) and $1.101 billion (DTC Transfers), made through a paying agent bank, were “safe harbored under [Bankruptcy Code §546(e), but “Payroll Transfers,” totaling $78 million, made to the debtor’s “directors, officers and employee shareholders through its payroll program … [were] not so shielded,” from fraudulent transfer claims, held the Second Circuit in a split decision. In re Nine West LBO Securities Litigation, 2023 WL 8180356, *4 (2d Cir. Nov. 27, 2023) (2-1). The majority opinion turned on “the scope of the term ‘financial institution’ as defined in [Code] §101(22)(A)” when applied to the paying agent bank and its customer, the debtor here. Id. In the majority’s view, “the definition encompasses bank customers [i.e., the debtor] only in transactions with the bank acting as their agent ….” Id.

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