The University of Chicago Faculty Blog has an ongoing discussion between Lynn LoPucki and Douglas Baird about Lynn’s (and Joseph Doherty’s) paper, "Bankruptcy Fire Sales," which you can read by clicking here.
The abstract of the article is –
This article reports the results of an empirical study comparing the recoveries in bankruptcy sales of large public companies in the period 2000-2004 with the recoveries in bankruptcy reorganizations during the same period. We find that, controlling for company values reported at case commencement, pre-filing operating profits, and post-filing operating profits, the recoveries in reorganization cases are more than double the recoveries from going concern sales. We attribute the low recoveries in sale cases to continuing market illiquidity and the corruption of the bankruptcy process by competition among bankruptcy courts for large, public company cases.
The online discussion is introduced here –
On Monday, we’ll begin the October H2H. Lynn LoPucki, the Security Pacific Bank Professor of Law at UCLA Law School and current visitor at Washington University Law, will discuss his recent paper Bankruptcy Fire Sales with our Douglas Baird. This promises to be a lively consideration of key fundamental questions in bankruptcy. In this paper co-authored with Joseph Doherty of UCLA Law, Lynn challenges some recent influential work on bankruptcy (in particular, Douglas’s 2002 paper with 1985 Chicago Law grad and now-University of Southern California Dean Bob Rasmussen). Read the paper over the weekend and show up Monday ready to talk.
Steve Jakubowski also discusses the issue in his post at the Bankruptcy Litigation Blog, "LoPucki v. Baird Redux: Bankruptcy Titans Blog ‘Head to Head’ Over Chapter 11’s Utility or Futility."