Subcon Research
Wednesday Jan 07 2009
Professor Widen's research into the use of substantive consolidation in large public company bankruptcies has been funded, in part, by a grant from the ABI Endowment Fund through the American Bankruptcy Institute. Read more. Cases for study were selected from the Bankruptcy Research Database maintained by Professor Lynn M. LoPucki at the UCLA School of Law. Read more.
The data collection and analysis process for this project is ongoing. Please check this site periodically for updates, corrections and refinements. Consider providing data on cases and double check primary source materials as they are posted. Provide comments and corrections to Professor Widen at wwidenATlaw.miami.edu (replace the "AT" with "@").
During the data collection and analysis process, please do not cite to information contained in this website unless you have obtained prior written consent from Professor Widen.
The study hopes to cover all 341 large public company bankruptcies filed in the five year period from 2000 to 2004. Out of this number, eight (8) cases were dismissed and thirteen (13) cases are pending (as of October 5, 2006). The remaining 320 cases form the core of the current study. (As pending cases are resolved, they will be added to this total.) The research team has collected some primary source material for 273 cases out of the 320 case core. The research team hopes to collect primary source material for all 320 cases, though collection of additional primary source material will benefit from the assistance of professionals in the bankruptcy community (particularly as PACER does not contain links to court filed documents in all cases).
Substantive consolidation was used in (at least) 151 out of 273 cases (or approximately 55% of the time) for which some primary source material has been collected. A case using the substantive consolidation technique takes, on average, 503 days to complete, whereas a case that does not use the substantive consolidation technique takes, on average, 385 days to complete. The frequency of the use of substantive consolidation is consistent with Professor Widen's earlier preliminary study of the largest 21 large public bankruptcy cases (11 out of 21). However, the prevalence of use of the doctrine dramatically exceeds projections made by Professor Widen for a larger pool of cases made using secondary source material (55% versus a projection of approximately 11%). See William H. Widen, Prevalence of Substantive Consolidation in Large Bankruptcies from 2000-2004: Preliminary Results, 14 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 47 (2006).
You may track the development of Professor Widen's dataset by checking links posted here from time to time. You may click on this Subcon Database link to check the research status of a particular company. The entry for "Worldcom" illustrates the type of summary data as well as links to primary data that Professor Widen hopes to develop for all bankruptcy cases under study during this period. If you have worked on one of these cases and the summary data suggests that primary source materials were not relied upon, you may contribute primary source materials by contacting Professor Widen at wwidenATlaw.miami.edu. (NB:replace the "AT" with "@" for the correct email address.) As primary source materials are double-checked and posted, you may examine them to see if you agree with Professor Widen's information and categorization. If you disagree with any entry, please contact Professor Widen and state the basis for your disagreement. By doing so, you will help enhance the quality of the dataset. Third party contributors to the dataset will be acknowledged in the research notes for particular companies. From time to time, Professor Widen will post links to spreadsheets detailing particular requests for information.Current Request For Primary Source Material link
Sarah Alexander (UM Law '08), William Hildbold (Wm & Mary Law '08) and David Marshall (UM Law '06) have provided essential research help on this project.
Subcon Research
Wednesday Jan 07 2009