Tag: Bankruptcy

For many credit professionals, bankruptcy can be one of the most stress-inducing business experiences. It is often a costly and lengthy process, testing a company’s financial resilience and the emotional bandwidth of everyone involved. Important deadlines arise quickly, notices are frequently sent by ordinary mail and failure to act on certain notices before deadlines can result in the loss of your company’s rights and claims.

Bankruptcy venue shopping, the practice of companies filing cases in jurisdictions they view as more favorable, has been part of the system for decades, often raising concerns among creditors about cost and participation in proceedings. Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-California) has introduced legislation since 2018 to address this by requiring that Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings take place where the principal place of business or principal assets of the corporation are located. Despite bipartisan support for the legislation, it has failed to meaningfully advance each time.

No matter how sound your credit policy or how thorough your practice, bankruptcy can strike without warning. One day your customer is current and the next, they’ve filed. And when they do, the payments you worked hard to collect could be at risk of being clawed back through a preference claim. 

The threshold for Subchapter V bankruptcy could permanently rise under a new bill introduced by Virginia Congressman Ben Cline. The Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment Act of 2026 would raise the threshold from $3 million to $7.5 million, effectively allowing more businesses to file via a faster, cost-effective route to bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy poses a great challenge for credit professionals—a tangled web of risk and recovery that tests every creditor’s strategy and patience. For unsecured trade creditors, the most daunting part is understanding their position in the payment hierarchy and seeking ways to maximize recoveries despite the relatively little leverage an individual unsecured trade creditor has in a given Chapter 11 case. One way to achieve these objectives is to serve on an Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors, or a creditors’ committee.

When most people think of a business filing bankruptcy, what they’re often picturing is a Chapter 7. This chapter of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code provides for liquidation, in other words, the sale or monetization of the debtor’s property and the distribution of any available net proceeds to creditors.

The Senate introduced an amendment to raise the debt limit for Subchapter V bankruptcy filings from $3 million to $7.5 million. Subchapter V of Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code offers small businesses an alternative to filing for a traditional bankruptcy that is more expedited and cost-efficient but shifts some of these burdens onto credit managers. 

In a rare bankruptcy-focused hearing in the House on July 15th, Members of Congress demonstrated a surprising level of interest in the topic, discussing an array of six or seven potential changes to bankruptcy code, but not quite achieving consensus yet. One proposal that, on the surface, received wide bipartisan support was restoration of the COVID-era Subchapter V $7.5 million debt eligibility ceiling. Looking more deeply, however, it is a little too early to call it a done deal.

Bankruptcy tends to stay out of the public’s focus–and by extension Congress’s–when the economy is doing well. That’s where we are now, with unemployment rates still sitting around 4% and inflation rates mostly under control. Because of that, Congress finally allowed the COVID-era small business chapter 11 bankruptcy eligibility threshold increases to expire. There has not been a major piece of legislation introduced since January that touches Chapter 11 or 13 bankruptcies.