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Braving Tempestuous Times

By Raymond W. Dusch
January 28, 2010

In a decade marked by credit crises and financial fraud, lenders, factors, securitization entities and other funding sources that, in good faith, provide lease and accounts receivable financing to leasing companies and vendors must increasingly rely on the absolute, unconditional “hell-or-high-water” nature of the obligations they choose to finance. Hell-or-high-water protection has long been considered a commercial necessity to ensure the free flow of equipment lease financing and now, bolstered by recent changes to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), it has been extended to accounts receivable financing of goods and services.

Through this crucible of a faltering economy, combined with the growth of financing scams and Ponzi schemes (such as the infamous “Matrix Box” in the NorVergence cases), courts have had a fresh opportunity to examine the limits of enforcing hell-or-high-water obligations. This article discusses several recent court decisions that suggest practical strategies to assure wary funding sources that hell-or-high-water obligations will remain a viable route for navigating treacherous economic seas.

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