CarVal UK Ltd. v. Giddens ex rel. SIPA Liquidation of Lehman Bros.

791 F.3d 277, 2015 WL 3938079
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedJune 29, 2015
DocketDocket No. 14-890
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 791 F.3d 277 (CarVal UK Ltd. v. Giddens ex rel. SIPA Liquidation of Lehman Bros.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
CarVal UK Ltd. v. Giddens ex rel. SIPA Liquidation of Lehman Bros., 791 F.3d 277, 2015 WL 3938079 (2d Cir. 2015).

Opinion

KATZMANN, Chief Judge:

This case presents the challenging task of fitting a decades-old statute to a financial arrangement of more recent vintage. Enacted in 1970, the Securities Investor Protection Act (“SIPA”) seeks to protect investors who have entrusted their assets to a broker-dealer. If the broker-dealer runs into financial trouble, SIPA authorizes the speedy return of investors’ property and ensures that investors will be made whole if the assets are lost. In this case, we must consider how SIPA treats an investor who delivered securities to a broker-dealer as part of a now-common financial transaction known as a repurchase agreement. We conclude that an investor who delivers securities to a broker-dealer as part of a repurchase agreement is not protected by SIPA because the investor did not entrust assets to the broker-dealer.

BACKGROUND

A repurchase agreement—commonly known as a “repo”—involves a matched purchase and sale. First, the “seller” agrees to sell assets, usually securities, to the “buyer” for a fixed price.1 Second, the buyer agrees to resell those same assets back to the seller at a later date and for a slightly higher price—hence the name “repurchase agreement.”

Viewed from the seller’s perspective, re-pos offer a mechanism for converting idle securities into liquid cash for a limited period. The seller can then employ that cash for investments or other purposes, before returning the cash to the buyer in exchange for the securities at the conclusion of the repo. Viewed from the buyer’s perspective, repos provide an outlet for excess cash, and for the temporary acquisition of attractive securities. Moreover, because the resale price is higher than the original sale price, the buyer retains the difference—known as the “repo rate”—as a fee for the transaction. When viewed from a buyer’s perspective, the transaction is called a “reverse repo.”

Between January 2000 and May 2001, Doral Bank and Doral Financial Corporation (collectively, “Doral”) entered into six repurchase agreements, with Doral as the seller, and Lehman Brothers Inc. (“Lehman”) as the buyer.2 These transactions were governed by industry-standard Master Repurchase Agreements (“MRAs”). Notably, the MRAs describe the relationship between Doral and Lehman as “contractual” and make not mention of a fiduciary relationship. The MRAs gave Lehman full legal title over the underlying securities, and Lehman was free—subject to its obligation to resell the securities on the repurchase date—to sell, transfer, pledge, or hy-pothecate the securities as it desired. Doral, for its part, received cash in exchange for the securities, and was free to use that cash for its own purposes. Doral also retained an economic interest in [280]*280the securities, including the rights to receive all principal, interest, dividends, and other distributions. The MRAs protected both Lehman and Doral against changes in the value of the securities by marking the repos to market. If the value of the securities fell, Doral was required to deliver additional securities or cash to Lehman to ensure that the market value of the securities matched the cash held by Doral. Conversely, if the value of the securities rose, Doral could demand additional cash or securities to rebalance the transaction.

Under these agreements, Doral sold several hundred million dollars’ worth of securities to Lehman, with the expectation that Lehman would resell the securities back to Doral at the conclusion of the transactions. Unfortunately for Doral, the financial crisis struck while the repurchase agreements were still outstanding, and Lehman fell apart before Doral could repurchase the securities from Lehman. Although Doral still had the cash that Lehman paid for the securities, those securities had apparently appreciated in the meantime such that Doral stood to profit if it had repurchased the securities at the agreed-upon price.

After Lehman entered into SIPA liquidation on September 19, 2008, Doral submitted timely claims asserting that it was entitled to recover this profit. The SIPA Trustee denied these claims, concluding that Doral was not a “customer” of Lehman, and therefore was not protected by SIPA. Doral promptly objected to the Trustee’s denial, but shortly thereafter transferred its claims to CVF Lux Master S.a.r.l. pursuant to Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 3001. CVF Lux Master S.a.r.l. is managed by CarVal Investors UK Limited (“CarVal”), the appellant in this case.

On June 25, 2013, the bankruptcy court (Peck, Bk. J.) affirmed the Trustee’s determination that the repos did not make Doral or CarVal a customer under SIPA. In re Lehman Bros. Inc., 492 B.R. 379 (Bankr.S.D.N.Y.2013). CarVal appealed the bankruptcy court’s decision to the district court. On February 26, 2014, the district court (Cote, J.) affirmed the bankruptcy court. In re Lehman Bros. Inc., 506 B.R. 346 (S.D.N.Y.2014).

DISCUSSION

This appeal turns on a single issue: was Doral a “customer” of Lehman for purposes of SIPA? If Doral was a customer of Lehman, then under SIPA the appellant is entitled to the prompt return of any property that Lehman was holding on Dorals behalf—i.e., the securities that Lehman never resold to Doral as required by the repurchase agreements, less the contractual repurchase price. Conversely, if Doral was not a customer of Lehman, then the SIPA door is closed, and the appellant is relegated to pursuing a claim for those unreturned securities in the ordinary course of Lehman’s bankruptcy proceedings. We begin our analysis of this question by first reviewing the principles articulated by our SIPA caselaw. We then turn to how these principles treat repurchase agreements. We conclude by addressing (1) the appellant’s reliance on Matter of Bevill, Bresler & Schulman Asset Mgmt. Corp. (Cohen v. Army Moral Support Fund), 67 B.R. 557 (D.N.J.1986), and (2) the appellant’s contention that Congress spoke to the treatment of repos in various statutes enacted since SIPA’s passage.3

[281]*281I. The Securities Investor Protection Act of 1970

Congress enacted SIPA in 1970 in response to “a business contraction [in the securities industry] that led to the failure or instability of a significant number of brokerage firms.” Sec. Investor Prot. Corp. v. Barbour, 421 U.S. 412, 415, 95 S.Ct. 1733, 44 L.Ed.2d 263 (1975). These failures sent shockwaves through the securities market as investors who had handed their assets over to broker-dealers suddenly lost access to their property. Existing bankruptcy safeguards did not adequately protect investors because investor assets were frequently commingled with the broker-dealer’s other assets, and thus would be tied up for years in extended bankruptcy proceedings. H.R. Rep. 91-1613, 1970 U.S.C.C.A.N. 5254, 5257. As more and more investors lost access to assets they had previously thought safe, the “situation ... threatened a ‘domino effect’ involving otherwise solvent brokers that had substantial open transactions with firms that failed.” Barbour, 421 U.S. at 415, 95 S.Ct. 1733.

SIPA was designed “to arrest this process, restore investor confidence in the capital markets, and upgrade the financial responsibility requirements for registered brokers and dealers.” Id.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
791 F.3d 277, 2015 WL 3938079, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/carval-uk-ltd-v-giddens-ex-rel-sipa-liquidation-of-lehman-bros-ca2-2015.