Douglas G. Baird
Antibankruptcy
119 Yale L.J. 648 (2010). In large Chapter 11 cases, the prototypical creditor is no longer a small player holding a claim much like everyone else’s, but rather a distressed debt professional advancing her own agenda. Secured creditors are more pervasive and enjoy much more control than they had even a decade ago. Moreover, financial innovation has dramatically increased the...
Absolute Priority, Valuation Uncertainty, and the Reorganization Bargain
115 Yale L.J. 1930 (2006) In a Chapter 11 reorganization, senior creditors can insist on being paid in full before anyone junior to them receives anything. In practice, however, departures from "absolute priority" treatment are commonplace. Explaining these deviations has been a central preoccupation of reorganization scholars for decades. By the standard law-and-economics account, deviations from absolute priority arise because...