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Taxpayer Suffers SILO (Pre-tax) Loss in Wells Fargo
Recently publicized budget cuts at the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (“MTA”) caused the closing of two subway lines and left thousands of New York City public-school children without the buses they usually take to school. Perhaps if Congress had not shut down SILOs in 2004, the MTA and many other major U.S. transit agencies would not be in such a financial bind. Thankfully, no one is asking the transits to disgorge the hundreds of millions of dollars of cash they raised doing LILOs and SILO sale-leaseback transactions on their railcars and buses. After all, their own regulator, the Federal Transit Administration, actively encouraged the transit agencies to engage in these “innovative financing transactions” (their name for SILOs). But that did not stop the IRS from litigating the tax benefits claimed by the banks and other corporations that provided the much-needed capital to the transit agencies in these transactions.
In Wells Fargo & Company v. United States, (Fed. Ct. Cl. No. 06-628T, Jan. 8, 2010), a court considered for the first time SILOs involving domestic municipal transit agency lessees. While one would have thought that the domestic and federally approved nature of the transactions would have some influence on the decision, they did not. The judge's decision and description of LILO and SILO transactions as “rotten to the core” reflect an unwelcome return to the result-oriented pro-government decision-making that has characterized most of the decided LILO/SILO cases.
Bankruptcy Sales: Finding a Diamond In the Rough
There is no efficient market for the sale of bankruptcy assets. Inefficient markets yield a transactional drag, potentially dampening the ability of debtors and trustees to maximize value for creditors. This article identifies ways in which investors may more easily discover bankruptcy asset sales.
Judge Rules Shaquille O'Neal Will Face Securities Lawsuit for Promotion, Sale of NFTs
A federal district court in Miami, FL, has ruled that former National Basketball Association star Shaquille O'Neal will have to face a lawsuit over his promotion of unregistered securities in the form of cryptocurrency tokens and that he was a "seller" of these unregistered securities.
Why So Many Great Lawyers Stink at Business Development and What Law Firms Are Doing About It
Why is it that those who are best skilled at advocating for others are ill-equipped at advocating for their own skills and what to do about it?
Blockchain Domains: New Developments for Brand Owners
Blockchain domain names offer decentralized alternatives to traditional DNS-based domain names, promising enhanced security, privacy and censorship resistance. However, these benefits come with significant challenges, particularly for brand owners seeking to protect their trademarks in these new digital spaces.
Removing Restrictive Covenants In New York
In Rockwell v. Despart, the New York Supreme Court, Third Department, recently revisited a recurring question: When may a landowner seek judicial removal of a covenant restricting use of her land?