Bankruptcy Blogs

The Daily Docket: Aurelius Scores Big in Tousa’s ‘Grand Bargain’

05/20/13

Florida home builder Tousa Inc ., which collapsed five years ago when the housing bubble popped, is seeking approval of a Chapter 11 plan that proposes to pay bondholders hundreds of millions of dollars, a big win for the hedge funds who bought up the company’s debt at a deep discount then battled lenders for a payout. Read the story here in the Daily Bankruptcy Review.

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MLEA at the University of Illinois

05/17/13

On October 11 & 12, the University of Illinois College of Law will host the 12th annual Midwestern Law & Economics Association conference. The event consists of law professors and economists presenting papers with varying degrees of law-and-economics content, ranging from empirical analyses and formal economic modeling to legal philosophy and doctrinal papers infused with economic thinking. Paper submissions are due by August 1 and should be submitted to me at rlawless-at-illinois-dot-edu.

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JPM's Chairman-CEO Drama; The Best Housing Solution?

05/17/13

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week.

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The Broke and the Beautiful: Greek Soccer Edition

05/17/13

This week on The Broke and the Beautiful, Greek soccer club AEK Athens is readying for bankruptcy. Also, Lou Pearlman’s bankruptcy case is coming to a close, and Kerry Katona is back on TV.

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Oreck Family Offers $22M for Vacuum Company

05/17/13

The Oreck family is rallying to take back their namesake vacuum-cleaner company from private equity owners in a deal valued at $22 million—a price that founder David Oreck hints is cheaper than what he sold the business for a decade ago.

Oreck, 89, has never stately publicly how much he profited from the 2003 sale of his company. But while his three sons lead the charge to buy the company’s 96 retail stores and 250-worker manufacturing plant in Tennessee out of bankruptcy, Oreck pointed out that the value of the business has certainly fallen in recent years.

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What a Sucker Bet Says About JPMorgan

05/17/13

The Chairman/CEO split issue is a sideshow. No one has considered the troubling implications of a large, crazy, lucky bet the London Whale made the year before his infamous money-losing trades.

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Don't Be Fooled by GSEs' Record Profits

05/17/13

The return to profitability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a reason to preserve them as part of a future housing finance system.

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Dodd-Frank Rollback, Pandit's Return, as JPM Turns

05/17/13

Receiving Wide Coverage ...

Deriving Pleasure: Too many price quotes will increase trading costs and reduce liquidity. That is the curious (if not spurious) story megabanks successfully stuck to in lobbying financial regulators to water down a key provision of the Dodd-Frank Act aimed at governing derivatives trading. The result was a 4-to-1 vote by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Thursday in favor of reducing the number of price quotes buyers must seek before conducting...

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GSE Critics Ignore Loan Performance

05/17/13

Loan performance data show the entire case against GSE underwriting standards, and their role in the financial crisis, is based on social stereotyping, smoke and mirrors, and little else.

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The Daily Docket: Kodak Seeks Court Approval of U.K. Pension Deal

05/17/13

Eastman Kodak Co. is seeking court permission to enter into a deal with its U.K. pension plan, an “unprecedented” settlement that lies at the heart of its reorganization proposal. Read the Daily Bankruptcy Review story here.

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