Law and legal issues

Deals, trends and research in structured finance and asset-backed securities for the week of Sept. 18-24

The rental-car company is mulling two tentative offers for loans of about $1 billion to $1.5 billion. The proposals came from a group of Hertz’s unsecured creditors and a separate set of first-lien creditors.

After a boom in corporate distress when economies shut down to deal with the pandemic, 2020 had been expected to be the biggest bankruptcy year ever. The pace of bankruptcies was widely expected to pick up after last month, which was slower than May-July, but still the worst August on record.

This year has already seen a glut of corporate failures: there were 177 U.S. bankruptcy filings year-to-date by companies with over $50 million in liabilities, according to data compiled by Bloomberg

Citigroup’s $900 million payment blunder in a normally low-profile part of the financial market dominated by a handful of banks has experts wondering if regulators will uncover a deeper problem.

The bank — which said it has been upgrading its loan operations platform after a review it undertook last year — said it mistakenly transmitted the payments after an employee didn't manually select the correct system options in its loan operation software.

Citigroup scored court orders freezing almost half of the more than $900 million it says was accidentally sent to Revlon lenders this month.

The bank has recouped part of the payment, which it blamed on a clerical error, but some of the lenders say they were owed the money in connection with an ongoing dispute.

The complaint filed by New York, California and Illinois argues that the regulation, issued in response to the 2015 Madden decision, undermines state laws intended to protect consumers.

The proposed combination of lease payments and required vehicle sales proceeds would will boost credit enhancement to around 45% by December, compared to 34% in June, according to Moody's.