IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bep/upennl/upenn_wps-1023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Do Distressed Companies Choose Delaware? An Empirical Analysis of Venue Choice in Bankruptcy

Author

Listed:
  • Kenneth Ayotte

    (Columbia Business School)

  • David Skeel

    (University of Pennsylvania Law School)

Abstract

We analyze a sample of large Chapter 11 cases to determine which factors motivate the choice of filing in one court over another when a choice is available. We focus in particular on the Delaware court, which became the most popular venue for large corporations in the 1990s. We find no evidence of agency problems governing the venue choice or affecting the outcome of the bankruptcy process. Instead, firm characteristics and court characteristics, particularly a court's level of experience, are the most important factors. We find that court experience manifests itself in both a greater ability to reorganize marginal firms and in reorganizing such firms faster. Delaware is similar to other high-experience courts in terms of the likelihood of reorganization controlling for firm characteristics, but is a standout in terms of speed. We estimate that a Delaware bankruptcy requires approximately 40% less time to complete than an equivalent case in another court.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenneth Ayotte & David Skeel, "undated". "Why Do Distressed Companies Choose Delaware? An Empirical Analysis of Venue Choice in Bankruptcy," Scholarship at Penn Law upenn_wps-1023, University of Pennsylvania Law School.
    • Handle: RePEc:bep:upennl:upenn_wps-1023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=upenn/wps
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hotchkiss, Edith Shwalb, 1995. "Postbankruptcy Performance and Management Turnover," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-21, March.
    2. Roberta Romano, 1998. "Empowering Investors: A Market Approach to Securities Regulation," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm74, Yale School of Management.
    3. Povel, Paul, 1999. "Optimal "Soft" or "Tough" Bankruptcy Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 659-684, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Surendranath Jory & Jeff Madura, 2010. "The long-run performance of firms emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(14), pages 1145-1161.
    2. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/293qice3lj861rvos9ns14n0h0 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Nicola Gennaioli & Stefano Rossi, 2010. "Judicial Discretion in Corporate Bankruptcy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(11), pages 4078-4114, November.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/293qice3lj861rvos9ns14n0h0 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Hülya K. K. Eraslan, 2008. "Corporate Bankruptcy Reorganizations: Estimates From A Bargaining Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(2), pages 659-681, May.
    6. Hallak, Issam, 2003. "Courts and sovereign eurobonds: Credibility of the judicial enforcement of repayment," CFS Working Paper Series 2003/34, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    7. Sattar A. Mansi & William F. Maxwell & John K. Wald, 2009. "Creditor Protection Laws and the Cost of Debt," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 701-717, November.
    8. Daniel M. Covitz & Song Han & Beth Anne Wilson, 2006. "Are longer bankruptcies really more costly?," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2006-27, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michelle J. White, 2005. "Economic Analysis of Corporate and Personal Bankruptcy Law," NBER Working Papers 11536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Dinev, Nikolay, 2017. "Voluntary Bankruptcy as Preemptive Persuasion," Economics Series 334, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    3. Fu, Fangjian & Lin, Leming & Officer, Micah S., 2013. "Acquisitions driven by stock overvaluation: Are they good deals?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(1), pages 24-39.
    4. Blazy, Régis & Chopard, Bertrand & Nigam, Nirjhar, 2013. "Building legal indexes to explain recovery rates: An analysis of the French and English bankruptcy codes," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1936-1959.
    5. Becht, Marco & Mayer, Colin & Wagner, Hannes F., 2008. "Where do firms incorporate? Deregulation and the cost of entry," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 241-256, June.
    6. Chopard, Bertrand & Langlais, Eric, 2009. "Défaut de paiement stratégique et loi sur les défaillances d'entreprises [Strategic default and bankruptcy law]," MPRA Paper 14366, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Arturo Bris & Alan Schwartz & Ivo Welch, 2005. "Who Should Pay for Bankruptcy Costs?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(2), pages 295-341, June.
    8. Breuer, Matthias, 2017. "How Does Financial-Reporting Regulation Affect Market-Wide Resource Allocation?," Working Papers 270, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    9. John R. Graham & Hyunseob Kim & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2019. "Employee Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy," NBER Working Papers 25922, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Guttentag Michael, 2007. "Accuracy Enhancement, Agency Costs, and Disclosure Regulation," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(2), pages 611-641, December.
    11. Ayadi, Rim & Abid, Ilyes & Guesmi, Khaled, 2021. "Survival of reorganized firms in France," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 38(C).
    12. Araujo, Aloisio & Ferreira, Rafael & Lagaras, Spyridon & Moraes, Flavio & Ponticelli, Jacopo & Tsoutsoura, Margarita, 2023. "The labor effects of judicial bias in bankruptcy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(2).
    13. Lara Abdel Fattah & Sylvain Barthélémy & Nadine Levratto & Benjamin Trempont, 2016. "Post-reorganization survival: a semi-parametric and non-parametric analysis of firm characteristics," EconomiX Working Papers 2016-22, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    14. Camacho-Miñano, María-del-Mar & Campa, Domenico, 2014. "Integrity of financial information as a determinant of the outcome of a bankruptcy procedure," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 76-85.
    15. Hege, U. & Mella-Barral, P., 1999. "Collateral, Renegotiation and the Value of Diffusely Held Debt," Other publications TiSEM d1806bd7-b34c-4249-b6fd-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Oren Bar-Gill & Michal Barzuza & Lucian Bebchuk, 2006. "The Market for Corporate Law," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(1), pages 134-160, March.
    17. Nicola Gennaioli & Stefano Rossi, 2010. "Judicial Discretion in Corporate Bankruptcy," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(11), pages 4078-4114, November.
    18. Gordon Phillips & Giorgo Sertsios, 2013. "How Do Firm Financial Conditions Affect Product Quality and Pricing?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1764-1782, August.
    19. Ayadi, Mohamed A. & Lazrak, Skander & Welch, Robert, 2017. "Determinants of bankruptcy regime choice for Canadian public firms," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 161-172.
    20. Lambert-Mogiliansky, Ariane & Sonin, Konstantin & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2007. "Are Russian commercial courts biased? Evidence from a bankruptcy law transplant," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 254-277, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    bankruptcy; Chapter 11; venue choice; forum shopping; Delaware; reorganization;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bep:upennl:upenn_wps-1023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.law.upenn.edu/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.