On December 15th, Myrtle Beach South Carolina’s Hard Rock Park will be auctioned off in order to repay creditors. Deutsche Bank, one of the largest creditors, is owed about $18.6 million and will be paid first. Next to be paid will be the lenders who provided the park about $2 million, followed by the payment of legal fees. Finally with any money that remains from the auctioning off of assets, any remaining “liens, claims and encumbrances” will be paid off. Suppliers who are owed money for services or goods provided to Hard Rock Park should follow the December 15th auction closely and work with a qualified South Carolina creditor’s rights attorney to ensure they recover any funds owed to them should surplus funds from the auction be available.
Archive for November, 2008
Bob Bernstein over at his firm’s blog had an interesting post about his observations at the New York CLLA Fall Convention. While the sagging economy is impacting everyone, for Creditor’s Rights practitioners it all depends on who you represent and those that you pursue that determines if the market is good or bad for your business model.
Unfortunately it seems as if the economic crisis is here to stay for the foreseeable future. According to NYU Stern School of Business Professor Edward Altman, by this time next year, the corporate default rate will be somewhere between 8.5 percent and 11.1 percent. That means there could be three to four times the number of corporate bankruptcies we’ve seen over the past year. And each one of those will probably involve layoffs which will make it harder for both pure collection attorneys and commercially focused lawyers to get paid.
Now is the time for consumer and commercial collection attorneys to differentiate themselves from their competition by promoting their profile/name recognition. Expanding the public knowledge of you and your practice through writing, speaking, working with the press, giving seminars, increased search engine placements will help to make sure that as the number of profitable (collectible) cases shrinks, the quality cases which money can be collected on are sent your way.
How do you rank in search engine results for creditor specific searches?
According to the Star Ledger, there are plenty of creditors not to happy with New Jersey’s professional hockey team. It seems as if the Devils have not paid the City of Newark for its new stadium’s sewer hookup, relocation expenses to local businesses that were displaced by construction, and invoices to various contractors. Additionally, the team has recently announced that it does not plan to pay its rent.
In its first eight months of operation, the arena brought in more than $30 million in revenue, but the authority will not know how much profit was made, if any, until it reviews the venue’s books later this year. Hopefully there will be some money left so the Devils can pay off the debt owed to their creditors.
According to Bloomberg, Delaware’s Bankruptcy Court’s website has been down for the past three days due to hardware issues. With the crash creditor and debtor attorneys with cases in Delaware had to resort to filing things the old fashion way …. on paper.
Since 2007, Delaware has been home to 60 of all Chapter 11 filings involving entities with over $250 million in assets.
Nation’s #2 Electronics Retailer In Trouble 
Richmond Virginia based Circuit City is the latest retailer to file for bankruptcy protection. The retailer will and seek to close 150 stores nationwide, renegotiate leases, lower rents, and terminate agreements while it deals with tightening credit from its vendors.
