Exit consents are often used as a restructuring tool by issuers of bonds. Issuers invite bondholders to exchange their existing bonds for new bonds (usually with a lower principal amount). In order to participate in the exchange, bondholders must agree to vote in favour of a resolution that amends the terms of the existing bonds so as to negatively affect (or, in Assénagon, [1] substantially destroy) their value. This is referred to as ‘covenant-stripping’. If the issuer does not achieve the majority needed to pass the resolution, the covenant-strip and the exchange do not happen. But if the resolution is passed, each participating holder’s bonds are exchanged for the new bonds, and the terms of the old bonds are amended to remove most of the protective covenants. This incentivises bondholders to participate in the exchange: accepting the new bonds (even though they will usually have a lower face amount than the existing bonds) may be preferable to being ‘left behind’ in the old bonds, which will cease to have any meaningful covenant protection.

Facts of the case

Anglo Irish Bank Corporation Limited (the “Bank”) suffered severe financial difficulties as a result of the financial crisis, and was nationalised in January 2009. As part of its restructuring, the Bank proposed an exchange offer whereby:

…continue reading: Exit Consents in Restructurings – Still a Viable Option?

One of the dumbest corporate governance issues is whether to split the roles of Board Chair and CEO. That debate is now playing out on the front pages of business sections (print and online) as shareholders will decide next week in a nonbinding vote whether to take the chairman of the board title away from JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon.

This is a reprise, for the zillionth time, of the pointless push by governance types to call the senior director “chairman of the board” rather than “lead” or “presiding” director and to deny the CEO the chairman of the board title. (Dimon, of course, is today Chairman of the Board and CEO of JP Morgan; Lee Raymond is JPM’s “lead” director.)

What is lost in virtually all stories and commentary hyping the Dimon election is an answer to the basic question: what is the function of the lead director? It is this issue of function, not form (i.e., what title that senior director carries), which is crucial.

It has been a governance verity, if not always a reality, that a strong board should provide oversight and constructive criticism to the CEO and other company leaders.

Since Enron, this basic principle has been implemented in most companies by designating one director to be first among equals, whatever her title. That director performs at least the following core roles (as I have discussed in detail elsewhere):

…continue reading: For Dimon and Board Leaders: Function Matters, Not Form

Transactions that reduce regulatory capital requirements for banks have recently come under media and regulatory scrutiny. The New York Times characterized them as a “trading sleight of hand.” The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has proposed limiting the ways in which capital requirements can be reduced by such transactions. This post discusses the new Basel proposals in light of prior guidance published by Basel and the Federal Reserve. As banks seek ways to meet heightened capital requirements and surcharges that are being implemented, they may find greater difficulties in reducing their exposures.

…continue reading: Basel Developments: Credit Risk Mitigation Transactions and Regulatory Capital Arbitrage

Why do governments repay external sovereign borrowing? This is a question that has been central to discussions of sovereign debt capacity, yet the answer is still being debated. Models where countries service their external debt for fear of being excluded from capital markets for a sustained period (or some other form of harsh punishment such as trade sanctions or invasion) seem very persuasive, yet are at odds with the fact that defaulters seem to be able to return to borrowing in international capital markets after a short while. With sovereign debt around the world at extremely high levels, understanding why sovereigns repay foreign creditors, and what their debt capacity might be, is an important concern for policy makers and investors. In our paper, Sovereign Debt, Government Myopia, and the Financial Sector, forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies, we attempt to address these issues.

…continue reading: Sovereign Debt, Government Myopia, and the Financial Sector

This post summarizes “The Dodd-Frank Act’s Maginot Line:  Clearinghouse Construction,” which will appear in the California Law Review later this year.

Regulatory reaction to the 2008–2009 financial crisis, following the failures of AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and the Reserve Primary Fund, focused on complex financial instruments that deepened the crisis. A consensus emerged that these risky financial instruments should move through safe, strong clearinghouses, which would be bulwarks against systemic risk.

The consensus turned into law, via the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, in which Congress instructed regulators to construct clearinghouses through which these risky financial instruments would trade and settle. Clearinghouses could repel financial risk, reduce contagion, and halt a local financial problem before it became an economy-wide crisis.

But clearinghouses are weaker bulwarks against financial contagion, financial panic, and systemic risk than is commonly thought. They may well be unable to defend the economy against financial stress such as that of the 2008–2009 crisis. Although they can be efficient financial platforms in ordinary times, they do little to reduce systemic risk in crisis times.

…continue reading: The Dodd-Frank Act’s Maginot Line: Clearinghouse Construction

On April 15, 2013, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued additional guidance (Guidance) with respect to the 2013 resolution plan submissions of the U.S. and foreign banking organizations that filed their initial resolution plans on July 1, 2012 (First-Round Filers).

The Guidance shows that the Federal Reserve and FDIC are intensifying their credibility review of resolution plans, requiring analysis of the most challenging issues raised by a Covered Company’s failure. Responding to the Guidance will require First-Round Filers to address head-on difficult questions raised by their original submissions. In recognition of the amount of new information required to be supplied, the Guidance extends the 2013 submission date for First-Round Filers to October 1, 2013.

Although by its terms the Guidance is limited to the plans of the First-Round Filers, it suggests that banking organizations in the second and third filing rounds may be required to undertake more searching analysis in their submissions next year.

In this post, we discuss the most significant aspects of the Guidance:

…continue reading: Guidance on Resolution Plans of U.S. and Foreign Banking Organizations

Treasury officials have recently suggested that the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) may soon designate the first round of systemically significant nonbank financial companies (Nonbank SIFIs). In March, Under Secretary for Domestic Finance Miller and Deputy Assistant Secretary for the FSOC Gerety stated that designations could occur “in the next few months.”

Moreover, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve) recently finalized its rule on determining when a company is “predominantly engaged in financial activities,” thus making the company potentially subject to FSOC designation. The final rule is notable for stating that an investment firm that does not comply with the Merchant Banking Rule’s investment holding periods and routine management and operation limitations may nonetheless be determined, on a case- by-case basis, to be engaging in “financial activities.” In addition, the final rule rejected the argument that mutual funds — including money market mutual funds — are “not engaged in a financial activity” and therefore not capable of designation.

…continue reading: FSOC Designation: Consequences for Nonbank SIFIS

Firms offering comprehensive financial services scored a significant victory on April 9, 2013, when Judge Robert Sweet of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed Capmark Financial Group Inc.’s (“Capmark”) insider preference action against four lender affiliates of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (“Goldman Sachs”), which arose out of Capmark’s 2009 bankruptcy. [1] Davis Polk represented the Goldman Sachs lender affiliates and advanced the arguments adopted by Judge Sweet. The court’s opinion rejected Capmark’s attempt to cast the lenders as “insiders” of Capmark based on an indirect equity interest in Capmark held by funds managed by affiliates of Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs’s service as an advisor to Capmark. In doing so, Judge Sweet reaffirmed that corporate veils separating a lender from an affiliated entity holding equity positions or serving as advisor to the debtor will not lightly be disregarded, and that participation in an arm’s-length transaction as an ordinary commercial lender will not give rise to insider status. Furthermore, Judge Sweet held that reorganized debtors are judicially estopped from making an about-face on key factual issues underlying relief secured in bankruptcy court. In sum, the Capmark decision should pose a substantial obstacle to claims alleging that a lender is an “insider” by virtue of affiliated entities’ contacts with a debtor in the absence of evidence that the lender actually used the affiliates’ contacts to influence the debtor’s decisions.

…continue reading: Court Dismisses Insider Preference Claims Against Affiliates of Goldman Sachs

This paper suggests that the essence of these funds and their regulation lies not just in the nature of their investments, as is widely supposed, but also—and more importantly—in the nature of their organization.

Specifically, every enterprise that we commonly think of as an investment fund adopts a pattern of organization that I am calling the “separation of investments and management.” These enterprises place their securities, currency and other investment assets and liabilities into one entity (a “fund”) with one set of owners, and their managers, workers, office space and other operational assets and liabilities into a different entity (a “management company” or “adviser”) with a different set of owners. Investment enterprises also radically limit fund investors’ control. A typical hedge fund, for example, cannot fire and replace its management company or its employees—not even by unanimous vote of the fund’s board and equity holders.

I explain this pattern of organization and explore its costs and benefits. I argue, paradoxically, that the separation of investments and management benefits fund investors by limiting their control over managers and their exposure to managers’ profits and liabilities.

…continue reading: The Separation of Investments and Management

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has issued a proposed regulation intended to address an emerging issue in international banking: how to grant non-US branch deposits equal treatment with US deposits in the event of the bank’s insolvency. Below are both big-picture and technical issues that need to be addressed in order to make the proposal effective.

The proposed regulation would effectively grant deposit status at non-US branches of US insured banks to deposits booked there for purposes of the depositor preference provisions of Federal law. [1] Its purpose is to provide the benefits of depositor preference status to deposits in branches in other countries. Depositor preference simply means that, in the liquidation of the bank, deposits will be paid ahead of non-deposit unsecured creditors, thereby increasing significantly the likelihood of full or almost-full repayment. This issue has been spotlighted by the United Kingdom, which has proposed to require that UK branches of foreign banks be entitled to depositor preference under their home country insolvency rules or provide clear disclosure of its absence to their depositors. This requirement, if implemented, might create an incentive for US banks to take such steps as making their US offices liable for repayment of such deposits; these would be so-called “dual-office” deposits, in which both a US and a non-US office would be liable for repayment.

…continue reading: Preferring Foreign Depositors