Tag: Bankruptcy Law

Regulating Bankruptcy Bonuses

Jared A. Ellias[*]

In 2005, the perception that wealthy executives were being rewarded for failure led Congress to ban Chapter 11 firms from paying retention bonuses to senior managers. Under the new law, debtors could still pay bonuses to executives—but only “incentive” bonuses triggered by accomplishing challenging performance goals that go beyond merely remaining employed. This Article uses newly collected data to examine how this reform changed bankruptcy practice. While relatively fewer firms use court-approved bonus plans after the reform, the overall level of executive compensation appears to be similar, perhaps because the new regime left large gaps that make it easy for firms to bypass the 2005 law and pay managers without the judge’s permission. This Article argues that the new law was undermined by institutional weaknesses in Chapter 11, as bankruptcy judges are poorly situated to analyze bonus plans and creditors have limited incentives to police executive compensation themselves.

Introduction

When large firms struggle financially, they usually restructure by firing employees, cutting the pay of those who remain, and cancelling promised pensions. While these measures are often necessary, they can seem unfair when highly paid senior managers do not appear to share in the pain.[1] This unfairness became a major public issue in the early 2000s, as formerly–high-flying titans of corporate America like K-Mart, Enron, and WorldCom filed for headline-grabbing Chapter 11 bankruptcies and subsequently paid millions of dollars in bonuses to senior managers.[2] The ensuing public outrage contributed to a growing sense that the economy had become rigged in favor of high-level executives who prospered no matter how poorly their companies fared.[3]

In 2005, Congress responded to this public outcry by banning Chapter 11 debtors from paying retention bonuses to high-level executives.[4] This legal reform eliminated part of then-existing bankruptcy practice, as the largest firms typically paid retention bonuses shortly after filing for bankruptcy on the theory that bonuses were needed to keep employees working hard to turn the firm around.[5] However, the reform did not ban Chapter 11 debtors from paying any type of bonus to senior managers—only bonuses triggered by a manager’s mere continued employment. Under the new regime, Chapter 11 debtors can pay bonuses if they convince a bankruptcy judge that the bonuses are “incentive” bonuses, or bonuses managers would only receive if they accomplish specific, challenging performance goals.[6]

This Article offers the first comprehensive analysis and empirical study of how the 2005 law changed corporate bankruptcy practice. As further explained below, the data suggest that the reform appears to have had little substantive effect on executive compensation.[7] The evidence suggests that this is primarily due to two flaws that undermine the reform. First, the new law only regulates payments characterized as bonuses during the period when firms are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Firms can easily sidestep the new law by paying managers before or after the bankruptcy case, and many appear to have done so.[8] Second, bankruptcy law institutions have struggled to administer the law. A rule that bans retention bonuses while allowing incentive bonuses requires bankruptcy judges to make fact-intensive determinations about the “challengingness” of a proposed bonus plan. Unfortunately, bankruptcy judges often lack the information and expertise necessary to perform this inquiry.[9] Although creditors would appear to be well-situated to assist the judge and scrutinize executive compensation themselves, they have little economic incentive to quibble over relatively small bonuses, because doing so might anger the managers with whom they need to negotiate more important Chapter 11 issues.

This Article proceeds as follows. Part I describes how bankruptcy bonuses became a frequent subject of public outrage and how Congress changed the law in 2005 to alter the process through which Chapter 11 debtors pay executive bonuses. Part II explains potential flaws in the design of the reform and develops hypotheses about how those design flaws arguably doomed its implementation. Part III summarizes the sampling and data gathering methodologies and then presents evidence that illustrates the design flaws predicted in Part II. One question that this Article does not answer is whether there actually was a problem that needed fixing prior to the 2005 reform. Most Chapter 11 attorneys appear to believe so, but this is an empirical question that is impossible to answer with available data. However, because the evidence presented in this Article does not support the view that Chapter 11 executive compensation was improved by the reform, Part IV argues that Congress should rethink the 2005 reform.

I.  The Rise of Bankruptcy Bonuses and the 2005 Bankruptcy Reforms

Part I first summarizes how the phrase “bankruptcy bonus” entered the public lexicon and why these bonuses became so controversial. Next, I explore the legislative history of the 2005 reform, before discussing the ways in which the new law altered the ability of Chapter 11 debtors to pay bonuses to their executives.

A.  The Rise of Bonuses as a Prominent Feature of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

For the first two decades of the Bankruptcy Act of 1978, bonus plans approved by bankruptcy judges were not an important part of bankruptcy practice.[10] The new Bankruptcy Code contained few provisions dealing with executive compensation, and bankruptcy courts routinely granted uncontroversial motions to pay employees their promised salaries.[11] This quiet period ended in the early twenty-first century, as Chapter 11 debtors and the law firms advising them developed a practice of paying retention bonuses outside the ordinary course of business after filing for bankruptcy.[12] Generally, firms that wanted to pay retention bonuses would file a motion asking the judge to approve “Key Employee Retention Plans,” or “KERPs,” which created schedules of payments of retention bonuses.[13]

Chapter 11 debtors offered two main justifications for why they needed to pay retention bonuses. First, they usually pointed to the value that the debtor’s current employees contribute to the restructuring effort.[14] Incumbent employees often have firm-specific knowledge that would be costly to lose and hard to replicate in new employees.[15] Even if the knowledge could be replicated, Chapter 11 debtors may fear that they will have trouble attracting new employees because new hires might hesitate before accepting a job with a bankrupt company.[16]

Second, many debtors claimed that they needed to update their compensation practices to avoid underpaying employees.[17] This underpayment problem arose because of the growing complexity of executive pay packages.[18] At a high level, executive compensation consists of two components: (1) a “base” payment, (2) and a “bonus” payment. The base payment is what we usually think of as salary; the amount of money that a manager expects to be paid for showing up to work every day.[19] The bonus payment is a catchall term that consists of all performance-related pay, such as rewards for achieving a sales goal or remaining an employee of the firm for a certain period of time.[20] Increasingly, in the early 1990s, large firms began to rely on bonus compensation, creating new pressure to update performance–compensation policies to reflect changes in the firm’s business and the disruption created by bankruptcy.[21] Accordingly, Chapter 11 debtors argued that they needed to pay retention bonuses to avoid paying valuable employees significantly less money than they were accustomed to making, undermining morale and retention.[22]

B.  As the Economy Fell into Recession in the Early 2000s, the Public Salience and Controversy over Chapter 11 Bonuses Increased

These retention bonus plans became the subject of controversy in the early 2000’s for three main reasons. First, the public spectacle of a failed firm paying millions of dollars in bonuses to senior managers while firing workers naturally led to populist outrage.[23] The controversy over bankruptcy-related pay echoed the still-raging public controversy over the high levels of executive pay, which seemed unfair to many observers and was especially salient after the dot-com bust sent the nation into recession.[24]

Second, the bonuses attracted criticism from some commentators who worried that the public nature of the payments and the large amount of media attention that they attracted were undermining public confidence in the bankruptcy process.[25]

Third––and most importantly from the perspective of bankruptcy policy––some observers believed that management was exploiting the basic structure of Chapter 11 to extract undeserved pay.[26] When a firm files for bankruptcy, existing management remains in control of the business, giving managers great influence over the firm and its stakeholders.[27] Management’s control over the bankruptcy process can lead the board of directors and even creditors to seek to pay managers for desired outcomes, such as enticing management to agree to sell the firm.[28] The dislocations created by bankruptcy can also provide management with bargaining power.[29] The board of directors may fear that the departure of a key executive would seriously reduce the prospect of a successful reorganization, creating an opportunity for opportunistic managers to demand more pay than they deserve.[30] This agency problem threatens the basic structure of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a process in which a firm’s asset value is supposed to be maximized for the benefit of pre-bankruptcy creditors, not the personal wealth of incumbent managers.

Of course, the Bankruptcy Code recognizes the power that management has over a corporation in bankruptcy and thus creates a strong system of checks and balances to counterbalance managerial power.[31] The first line of defense is the federal bankruptcy judge, who must approve any payment of bonuses.[32] Next, bankruptcy law appoints an “[o]fficial [c]ommittee of [u]nsecured [c]reditors” to act as a “watchdog” that scrutinizes management’s business decisions.[33] This committee is generally composed of some of the firm’s major creditors, who stand to receive lower payouts at the end of the bankruptcy case if the firm overpays management.[34] The committee will usually have a high-powered law firm and investment bank assisting them, and they will analyze any proposed bonus plan to determine whether it overpays managers.[35] To the extent that creditors believe management is extracting undeserved pay, they can file written objections informing the judge of the bonus plan’s problems and negotiate in the shadow of those objections and the right to object.[36]

Further, the Department of Justice’s United States Trustee Program provides a second level of governmental oversight that helps the bankruptcy judge assess the motions in front of her.[37] Congress created the United States Trustee Program as a part of the Bankruptcy Act of 1978 to oversee the then-new system of bankruptcy courts.[38] Each district has its own Office of the United States Trustee, which generally consists of several attorneys and other legal professionals.[39] These lawyers supervise all bankruptcy cases, looking for evidence that bankruptcy law is being abused.[40] The United States Trustee has the right to file an objection of its own if it determines that management is using its control of the corporation to extract excessive compensation.[41]

Prior to the 2005 reform, this system of checks and balances lay dormant because bankruptcy law instructed the judge to defer to management in determining if bonuses were needed.[42] Chapter 11 debtors only needed to convince the judge that a proposed retention bonus plan was the product of reasonable business judgment.[43] This was an easy standard to satisfy, and firms would do so by arguing that the employees were important to the successful reorganization of the business[44] and that the board of directors engaged in some sort of deliberative process to develop the plan.[45]

C.  Congress Empowers the Oversight of Managers and Restricts Retention Bonuses with the 2005 Reform

This equilibrium changed when Congress banned retention bonuses as part of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (the “BAPCPA”).[46] Congress sought to “eradicate the notion that executives were entitled to bonuses simply for staying with the Company through the bankruptcy process.”[47] After the reform, bankruptcy judges were only allowed to authorize Chapter 11 debtors to pay “incentive” bonuses, typically through a formal “Key Employee Incentive Plan” (“KEIP”).[48] In theory, KEIPs tie any bonus payments to the achievement of challenging performance goals, such as improving the firm’s financial performance or attaining a milestone in the bankruptcy process like confirming a plan of reorganization.[49] As a result, bankruptcy judges found themselves with the challenging new task of evaluating proposed bonus plans to determine if they were permissible incentive plans or “disguised retention plans” that did not actually challenge management.[50]

Consider a hypothetical bonus plan that pays an executive if the firm’s revenue increases by 10 percent. Is this an incentive plan or a retention plan? The answer turns on how likely it is for that anticipated revenue increase to occur.[51] An executive who commits to such a plan may very well have private information regarding an imminent sale to a major customer that will yield the 10 percent increase, making the incentive plan a “disguised retention plan” that rewards the manager for remaining employed without requiring extra effort and accomplishment to earn the bonus.[52] On the other hand, in some cases a 10 percent increase in revenue could be highly unlikely and something management can only achieve with extra effort.[53] How can one proposed bonus plan be distinguished from another? In the seminal case interpreting the 2005 reform, Judge Burton I. Lifland of the Southern District of New York declared “if it walks like a duck (KERP) and quacks like a duck (KERP), it’s a duck (KERP).”[54]

Judge Lifland also identified several factors that bankruptcy courts should analyze to determine if a proposed bonus plan creates challenging incentive bonuses or disguised retention bonuses:

Is there a reasonable relationship between the plan proposed and the results to be obtained, i.e., will the key employee stay for as long as it takes for the debtor to reorganize or market its assets, or, in the case of a performance incentive, is the plan calculated to achieve the desired performance?

Is the cost of the plan reasonable in the context of the debtor’s assets, liabilities and earning potential?

Is the scope of the plan fair and reasonable; does it apply to all employees; does it discriminate unfairly?

Is the plan or proposal consistent with industry standards?

What were the due diligence efforts of the debtor in investigating the need for a plan; analyzing which key employees need to be incentivized; what is available; what is generally applicable in a particular industry?

Did the debtor receive independent counsel in performing due diligence and in creating and authorizing the incentive compensation?[55]

To summarize, the 2005 reform is best understood as creating new responsibilities for Chapter 11 debtors, the bankruptcy judges, and the Department of Justice’s United States Trustee Program, while providing new bargaining power for creditors. Prior to the reform, a Chapter 11 debtor could easily obtain a judge’s permission to pay bonuses by demonstrating a plausible business justification.[56] After the reform, Chapter 11 debtors can only pay bonuses if they convince a judge that a proposed bonus plan requires management to demonstrate extra effort and skill. The standard developed in the Dana Corp., and re-articulated above, requires the debtor to present evidence of industry and firm practices to demonstrate the reasonableness of the overall level of compensation, as well as the structure that would trigger the payment of bonuses. In making this case, Chapter 11 debtors typically present the testimony of an independent compensation consultant that helped to develop the incentive plan. The judge then must weigh significantly more evidence and make more findings of fact than was the case prior to the 2005 reform. This new bargaining dynamic empowers creditors, who can investigate a proposed bonus plan, file an objection, and negotiate to change the plan in the shadow of the objection.[57]

II.  Theoretical Problems with the 2005 Reform

This Part describes theoretical flaws that undermine the bankruptcy system’s then-newfound mandate to police executive compensation in bankruptcy. These flaws lead to three testable hypotheses about the reform, which are respectively analyzed using empirical evidence in Section III.B.

As a general rule, laws that leave gaps create incentives for regulatory evasion.[58] The 2005 reform only affects bonuses paid through court-approved bonus plans in Chapter 11. This narrow scope allows firms to simply sidestep the regulation by paying managers prior to filing for bankruptcy or waiting until a Chapter 11 case ends to adjust management’s compensation retroactively. Indeed, the reform likely created financial incentives for firms to engage in evasion, as the additional work that law firms need to do to meet the new standard is costly.

Accordingly, hypothesis one is that firms will respond to the increased costs of proposing a bankruptcy bonus plan by evading the new regulation and paying managers through channels unaffected by the 2005 reform.[59]

Further, the reform places bankruptcy judges in the challenging position of distinguishing permissible incentive plans from forbidden retention plans. To do so, judges must assess ex ante the likelihood that a triggering event will occur. If a performance goal is likely to occur without additional managerial effort, the judge should reject it as a disguised retention plan that rewards management for remaining employed. This is a difficult analysis. The boards of directors and managers that develop bonus plans presumably know their businesses better than the judge, placing the judge at a disadvantage in evaluating a bonus plan. Further, judges are bankruptcy lawyers and lack subject-matter expertise in executive compensation, let alone specific knowledge of the firm’s industry. Moreover, even in a world with perfect information, the judge would still struggle to perform this analysis because the line between retention and incentive plans is very thin. All incentive plans have some retentive element, as employees often remain in jobs to earn promised bonuses.[60]

Therefore, hypothesis two is that bankruptcy judges are unlikely to be able to screen out all but the most obviously disguised retention plans, and the bonus plans that are approved are unlikely to be significantly different in substance than the bonus plans prior to the reform.[61]

The challenges that bankruptcy judges face are exacerbated by the incentives that creditors have to use their bargaining power to police executive compensation.[62] One of the main reasons that executive compensation theorists have long sought to empower investors with a greater voice in determining executive pay is because of the belief that the excess compensation paid to managers reduces the returns to investors.[63] Superficially, this is the case in Chapter 11 as well, as creditors are generally the firm’s residual claimant and thus the losers if the firm overpays management. However, executive bonuses affect such a small amount of value in large Chapter 11 cases—single-digit millions when the firm’s assets can potentially be worth billions—that we would expect creditors might decline to spend the time and money required to actively police executive compensation.

Further, the bankruptcy judge is unlikely to get much help from the Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee Program. In theory, the Department of Justice only has incentives to enforce bankruptcy law, and the 2005 reform created a new Congressional policy of policing abuses in executive compensation. In practice, the U.S. Trustee suffers from the same informational asymmetries and expertise deficits that limit a judge’s effectiveness in evaluating a proposed bonus plan. The 2005 reform did not provide extra money to hire compensation experts to help the lawyers in the U.S. Trustee’s office analyze proposed bonus plans.

Accordingly, hypothesis three is that the bankruptcy judges are unlikely to receive much help from creditors and the U.S. Trustee. Creditors have weak incentives, on average, to invest the time and resources required to police executive compensation aggressively. The U.S. Trustee lacks the necessary expertise to perform the role assigned to it by Congress.[64]

III.  Evidence of Design Problems in the 2005 Reform

Part III presents an account of the flaws that undermine the 2005 reform. Section III.A first describe the data gathering methodology and the sample of bankruptcy cases. In Section III.B, evidence from the empirical study tests the hypotheses developed in Part II.

A.  Sample and Data Gathering

To study the reform, I gathered two samples of data: (1) a large sample that represents the population of large companies that filed for Chapter 11 between 2001 and 2012 with traded debt or equity and (2) a smaller case study sample of cases from before and after the statutory change to examine bonus plans (and bankruptcy litigation) in a more comprehensive and detailed way. Both samples are drawn from Next Generation Research’s list of large company bankruptcies from 2001 to 2012.[65] I describe the construction of the large sample and the case study sample in turn.

The large sample consists of all large companies from Next Generation Research’s list of large company bankruptcies from 2001 to 2012 that traded debt or equity. I focus on firms with publicly traded debt or equity because those firms have obligations to file disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), so information on firm compensation practices are available. Nearly all of the largest firms to file for bankruptcy have traded debt or equity, and this larger sample is very close to the population of large companies that restructured their debt in Chapter 11 court proceedings between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2012.

I identified the firms included in the larger sample through the following procedure.[66] For each of the 1,998 large firms that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy between 2001 and 2012, I looked for matches in the list of debt or equity issued by large firms that traded in the databases kept by TRACE, MarkIt, and Bloomberg.[67] For example, if I found that a firm filed for bankruptcy on January 3, 2003, I looked for trades in that firm’s debt or equity entered on or after that date. This larger sample consists of 408 cases. For each of the firms in the sample, I collected extensive information about the firm and the bankruptcy case from the court docket and important pleadings. Most importantly, I recorded whether the firm sought judicial approval of a bankruptcy bonus plan and identified which, if any, bonus plans were approved by the bankruptcy judge. For all of these firms, I also examined their securities filings to obtain additional information on how the firm historically compensated its executives.[68]

I collected the case study sample using a similar method. I again began with the list of all firms listed in Next Generation Research’s database of corporate bankruptcies, including those without traded debt or equity.[69] The case study sample comes from two time periods. First, I collected a “before” sample of every large bankruptcy case from Next Generation Research’s list of large corporate bankruptcies that filed between January 1, 2004 and April 20, 2005, the date that BAPCPA was signed into law by President George W. Bush. I begin with January 1, 2004, because older dockets are generally no longer available on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records database (“PACER”). The initial sample consisted of 140 potential Chapter 11 debtors, of which forty-one (approximately 30%) sought judicial approval for a key employee retention or incentive plan. These forty-one Chapter 11 debtors constitute the pre-BAPCPA sample, which I term the “pre-reform” or “pre-2005 reform” sample.

The second case study sample period consists of all firms that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010 that implemented bankruptcy bonus plans. I choose a period four years after the reform because it took several court decisions to settle on a legal standard for adjudicating proposed post-reform incentive plans and lawyers needed time to develop customs to meet that standard.[70] I began with the list of 375 large bankruptcy cases and examined each court docket to look for a proposed bonus plan. The final sample consists of fifty-seven bonus plans filed by debtors that filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and 2010.[71]

I studied each case in the case study sample very closely. In addition to examining the docket and acquiring basic information from court filings, I examined all objections filed by creditors and the United States Trustee to managements’ motions seeking approval of bonus plans. I also compared the bonus plans approved by the court to the original bonus plans to track changes made over the course of the bargaining process. Next, I examined the goals created by the plans and used the date of bankruptcy events, the disclosure statement and subsequent securities disclosures, news stories, and press releases to determine whether management achieved the incentive payout.

Finally, I examined all of the legal bills filed by the debtor’s counsel for the period between the petition date and the bonus plan being approved by the court. When large firms are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, they ask for (and receive) a court order allowing them to retain a law firm to help them with their bankruptcy.[72] The Chapter 11 debtor then submits its law firm’s legal bills to the court and asks for permission to pay them.[73] The Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure require a detailed statement of the time the attorneys spent on the firm’s legal problems, which in practice translates to the full record of all time charged to the client. I oversaw a team of research assistants that worked together to identify the amount and value of time that law firms spent on bonus plans for both time periods in the case study sample. I provide an illustrative example of this analysis in the Appendix. To my knowledge, this is a new method in the bankruptcy practice literature, and a very labor-intensive one, but it holds significant promise in terms of aiding our understanding of bankruptcy costs.

B.  Assessing Evidence of Design Flaws in the 2005 Reform

The 2005 reform aimed to reduce public outrage over bankruptcy bonuses, force managers to earn their pay, and reduce the overall level of executive compensation. Section III.B uses evidence from the sample to test the hypotheses developed in Part II. In general, I begin with the high-level portrait painted by the larger sample, test for obvious confounding explanations of the findings using regression analysis, and then look closely at the case study sample to reveal a more detailed picture.

1.  Assessing the Effect of the Reform: Evidence of Higher Costs and Regulatory Evasion.

Hypothesis one predicts that the reform will increase the costs associated with bankruptcy bonus plans and lead to regulatory evasion. I begin by assessing the impact of the reform on bankruptcy costs before moving on to the observed frequency of bonus plans and evidence that points to rampant regulatory evasion.

a.  The Effect of the Reform on Bankruptcy Costs

As a threshold matter, by requiring the debtor’s counsel to do extra work to approve a bonus plan, the 2005 reform and Dana Corp. may have increased the costs of bankruptcy.[74] To estimate the size of the increase, I reviewed all of the debtor’s counsel’s bills and identified the time entries corresponding to work on a bankruptcy bonus plan. Pre-reform, the median debtor’s counsel billed $30,484 (mean of $65,198) for work on a bankruptcy bonus plan in constant 2010 U.S. dollars.[75] Post-reform, the median debtor’s counsel billed $86,411 (mean of $140,218) for their work on their debtor’s bonus plans, an increase of 64%. For comparison’s sake, the debtor’s counsel’s bill for the entire bankruptcy case was $5,191,576 in the post-reform sample, as compared to $3,449,969 pre-reform—an increase of 33%. The costs associated with a bankruptcy bonus plan grew twice as fast as the debtor’s counsel’s fees as a whole, suggesting that the new standard significantly increased the amount of legal work the debtor’s attorneys needed to do to comply.[76]

b.  The Effect of the Reform on Bonus Plan Utilization

[*] *.. Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Boston University School of Law; Associate Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings College of the Law. I appreciate helpful comments from Afra Afsharipour, Jordan Barry, Abe Cable, John Crawford, Ben Depoorter, Scott Dodson, Michael Klausner, Emily Murphy, Shu-Yei Oei, Elizabeth Pollman, Diane Ring, Natalya Schnitser, Fred Tung, David Walker, and faculty workshops at the University of California, Davis, Boston College, and Boston University.

 [1]. See Gretchen Morgenson, MARKET WATCH; A Year’s Debacles, From Comic to Epic, N.Y. Times (Dec. 30, 2003), https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/business/market-watch-a-year-s-debacles
-from-comic-to-epic.html (condemning American Airlines for negotiating wage concessions from its unionized workers while rewarding top executives with retention bonuses and setting aside $40 million to protect the pensions of executives); see also David Olive, Many CEOs Richly Rewarded for Failure; They Didn’t Suffer as Stocks Tanked in New Economy, Toronto Star, Aug. 25, 2002, at A10.

 [2]. These bonus plans were very controversial because the payment of bonuses in bankruptcy is a public event, leading to press coverage. See Bloomberg News, Bankruptcy Court Approves FAO Executive Pay Plan, N.Y. Times (Feb. 15, 2003), https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/15/business
/company-news-bankruptcy-court-approves-fao-executive-pay-plan.html (noting an approved FAO Inc. executive-retention plan paying $1.1 million in bonuses); see also Seth Schiesel, Revised Contract for WorldCom’s New Chief Executive Wins Approval from 2 Judges, N.Y. Times (Dec. 17, 2002), https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/business/revised-contract-for-worldcom-s-new-chief-executive-wins-approval-from-2-judges.html (detailing the executive compensation plan for the CEO of WorldCom, which was approved during the company’s bankruptcy); Rhonda L. Rundle, FPA’s CEO Received Salary Increase Five Days Before Chapter 11 Filing, Wall St. J. (Aug. 3, 1998), https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB902097584655373000. Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, summarized the populist argument against bankruptcy bonuses in a 2012 letter demanding that the Department of Justice police them more vigorously: “Corporate directors, executives and managers who were at the helm of a company as it spiraled into bankruptcy should not receive bonuses of any kind, let alone excessive bonuses, during a reorganization or liquidation.” Mike Spector & Tom McGinty, U.S. Is Asked to Review Bankruptcy Bonuses, Wall St. J. (Feb. 13, 2012), https://www.wsj.com
/articles/SB10001424052970204642604577218033661586936.

 [3]. See, e.g., Kristine Henry, Beth Bonus Called Good Way to Keep Salaried Steel Talent, Balt. Sun (Jan. 6, 2002), https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2002-01-06-0201050169-story.html (detailing executive retention plans paid out in high-profile Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases); Nelson D. Schwartz, Greed-Mart Attention, Kmart Investors. The Company May Be Bankrupt, but Its Top Brass Have Been Raking It In, Fortune (Oct. 14, 2002), http://archive.fortune.com/magazines
/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/10/14/330017/index.htm. Many bankruptcy lawyers at the time were also upset by this behavior, fearing that managers were abusing Chapter 11 to extract excessive compensation at the expense of public confidence in the bankruptcy system. See generally Robert J. Keach, The Case Against KERPS, 041003 Am. Bankr. Inst. 9 (2003) (discussing issues with key employee retention plans (“KERPS”) at the American Bankruptcy Institute’s 2003 Annual Spring Meeting).

       [4].       See In re U.S. Airways, Inc., 329 B.R. 793, 797 (Bankr. E.D. Va. 2005) (“Congressional concern over KERP excesses is clearly reflected in changes to the Bankruptcy Code that will become effective for cases filed after October 17, 2005.”); see also Dorothy Hubbard Cornwell, To Catch a KERP: Devising a More Effective Regulation than §503(c), 25 Emory Bankr. Dev. J. 485, 486–87 (2009) (discussing the amendments to the Bankruptcy Code); Rebecca Revich, The KERP Revolution, 81 Am. Bankr. L.J. 87, 88–92 (2007) (explaining how Congress restricted the ability of Chapter 11 debtors to “retain management employees under programs generally referred to as Key Employee Retention Plans (KERPs)”). In support of the ban, Senator Edward Kennedy delivered a memorable floor statement condemning “glaring abuses of the bankruptcy system by the executives of giant companies.” In re Dana Corp., 358 B.R. 567, 575 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2006) (noting statement of Senator Kennedy in support of the amendments and discussing the legislative history of the amendments to section 503 of the Bankruptcy Code). It is worth noting that beyond the arguments over the propriety of paying bankruptcy bonuses, some observers questioned their efficacy, noting, for example, that after Kmart implemented a KERP plan, nineteen of the twenty-five covered executives left within six months and that Enron’s KERP failed to staunch the outflow of talented employees. Keach, supra note 3.

 [5]. The executive compensation restrictions were a very minor piece of a much larger reform, as part of a bill called the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (“BAPCPA”), Pub. L. No. 109-8, 119 Stat. 23 (2005) (codified as amended in scattered titles of the U.S. Code). While this paper is the first to study the executive compensation restrictions in this degree of detail, many other papers study other aspects of this reform. See generally, e.g., Kenneth Ayotte, Leases and Executory Contracts in Chapter 11, 12 J. Empirical Legal Stud. 637 (2015); Pamela Foohey et al., Life in the Sweatbox, 94 Notre Dame L. Rev. 219 (2018); Robert M. Lawless et al., Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail? An Empirical Study of Consumer Debtors, 82 Am. Bankr. L.J. 349 (2008); Michael Simkovic, The Effect of BAPCPA on Credit Card Industry Profits and Prices, 83 Am. Bankr. L.J. 1 (2009).

 [6]. For example, a Chapter 11 bonus plan might require management to increase earnings or move through Chapter 11 quickly. See infra notes 46 and 57 and accompanying text.

 [7]. Bankruptcy lawyers largely share this skeptical view of the efficacy of the reform. See, e.g., Eric Morath, Bankruptcy Beat: ABI Poll Casts Doubt on Bonus Reforms, Wall St. J. (Oct. 21, 2009), https://blogs.wsj.com/bankruptcy/2009/10/21/abi-poll-casts-doubt-on-bonus-reforms (reporting survey results that a majority of respondents agree that the reform was not effective in limiting executive compensation). These poll results are consistent with other anecdotal evidence in the popular media. See, e.g., Nathan Koppel & Paul Davies, Bankruptcy-Law Overhaul Has Wiggle Room; Limits Set on Key Executives’ Pay, but Door Is Wide Open on Bonuses Linked to Achieving Certain Goals, Wall St. J., https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114342447370208718 (last updated Mar. 27, 2006) (“[B]ankruptcy lawyers say companies have managed to sidestep some of the law’s provisions.”). Lee R. Bogdanoff, a founding partner of the law firm Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff & Stern LLP in Los Angeles, was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying that “[t]he amendment to the code changed the means, but not the value of these plans . . . It’s just changed the way you get there, not necessarily how much management gets at the end.” Steven Church, Buffets Rewards Managers Who Put Chain in Bankruptcy, Bloomberg News (Apr. 5, 2012), http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-05/buffets-rewards-managers-who-put-chain-in-bankruptcy. A former Department of Justice official charged with supervising the bankruptcy system argues, “Congress took a stab at righting the problem and companies quickly found a way to circumvent their intent.” Mike Spector & Tom McGinty, The CEO Bankruptcy Bonus, Wall St. J. (Jan. 27, 2012), https://www.wsj.com/articles
/SB10001424053111903703604576584480750545602. A contemporaneous working paper provides suggestive evidence that at least some firms contracted around the reform. See Vedran Capkun & Evren Ors, When the Congress Says “PIP Your KERP”: Performance Incentive Plans, Key Employee Retention Plans, and Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Resolution (Feb. 15, 2009) (unpublished manuscript), https://people.hec.edu/ors/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2018/02/PIP_your_KERP_20140104.pdf (“By trying to suppress KERPs, which were deemed to be ‘self-dealing’ plans proposed by unscrupulous managers, BAPCPA appears to have led to ‘structural arbitrage.’”).

 [8]. See infra Section III.B.1.c.

 [9]. See infra Section III.B.2.b. The fact that bonuses created by the post-2005 incentive bonus plans are similarly sized to the pre-reform retention plans casts doubt on the notion that these bonuses came with the additional risk that would come from truly challenging performance goals.  Michael C. Jensen & Kevin J. Murphy, CEO Incentives—It’s Not How Much You Pay, but How, Harv. Bus. Rev., May–June 1990, at 138 (outlining the difficulty of adequately linking executive pay to compensation while simultaneously not appearing to overpay executives).

 [10]. See Sreedhar T. Bharath et al., The Changing Nature of Chapter 11 at 12–14 (Fisher Coll. of Bus., Paper No. 2008-03-003, 2010), http://ssrn.com/abstract=1102366.

 [11]. See, e.g., Motion of Debtor and Debtor in Possession Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §§ 105, 507(a)(3), 507(a)(4) and the “Doctrine of Necessity” for an Order Authorizing It to Pay: (A) Prepetition Emp. Wages, Salaries and Related Items; (B) Prepetition Emp. Bus. Expenses; (C) Prepetition Contributions to and Benefits Under Emp. Benefit Plans; (D) Prepetition Emp. Payroll Deductions and Withholdings; and (E) All Costs and Expenses Incident to the Foregoing Payments and Contributions Filed by Debtor-in-Possession Bush Indus., Inc. at 13, In re Bush Indus., 315 B.R. 292 (Bankr. W.D.N.Y. 2004) (No. 04-12295).

 [12]. In re Allied Holdings, Inc., 337 B.R. 716, 721 (Bankr. N.D. Ga. 2005) (“KERP programs such as the one the Debtors seek approval to implement have become customary uses of estate funds in large business reorganizations.”); see also David A. Skeel, Jr., Creditors’ Ball: The “New” New Corporate Governance in Chapter 11, 152 U. Pa. L. Rev. 917, 926–28 (2003) (discussing innovations in executive compensation and the evolution of bankruptcy bonuses); Mechele A. Dickerson, Approving Employee Retention and Severance Programs: Judicial Discretion Run Amuck, 11 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 93, 96–97 (2003) (discussing the prevalence of retention bonuses offered in Chapter 11 cases); James H. M. Sprayregen et al., First Things First—A Primer on How to Obtain Appropriate “First Day” Relief in Chapter 11 Cases, 11 J. Bankr. L. & Prac. 275, 299 (2002) (suggesting Chapter 11 debtors consider bonus plans as part of bankruptcy planning). A contemporaneous press account suggests that bonuses became a common feature because many of the formerly high-flying tech firms had high bankruptcy costs associated with a prolonged stay in Chapter 11 that would leave little value for creditors in the event creditors were forced to hire new managers. In effect, the inability of Chapter 11 to preserve the going concern value of telecom firms provided managers with the power to extract holdout value in exchange for remaining at their desks. One investment banker was quoted as saying that sophisticated activist bondholders budgeted for bankruptcy bonuses when they made their investments in the firm’s debt. Ann Davis, Want Some Extra Cash? File for Chapter 11, Wall St. J., Oct. 31, 2001, at C1 (discussing the rise in popularity of Chapter 11 bonuses and the changing views among creditors). By keeping them at their desks with retention payments, creditors retain value in the firm that would otherwise be lost if they were to quit. Yair Listkoin criticizes retention payments for not being more closely related to positive bankruptcy outcomes. Yair Listokin, Paying for Performance in Bankruptcy: Why CEOs Should Be Compensated with Debt, 155 U. Pa. L. Rev. 777, 790 (2007) (summarizing arguments against “pay to stay” compensation). Robert Rasmussen makes an argument that Congress erred by eliminating retention bonuses because they usefully provided creditors—the new owners—with a real option regarding the debtor’s workers. That is to say, by retaining employees long enough to evaluate them, retention bonuses serve the useful purpose of allowing creditors or new managers to decide who to keep. See Robert K. Rasmussen, On the Scope of Managerial Discretion in Chapter 11, 156 U. Pa. L. Rev. PENNumbra 77, 80–85 (2007).

 [13]. Sandra E. Mayerson & Chirstalette Hoey, Employee Issues from Pre-Petition Severance to Post-Petition Defaulted Pension Plans; and Standards for Permitting Senior Management Bonuses, 092002 Am. Bankr. Inst. 409 (2002).

 [14]. See, e.g., In re Aerovox, Inc., 269 B.R. 74, 76 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2001).

The Debtor summarized the incentives it designed as follows: 1) to keep the eligible employees, including the Key Employees, in the Debtors employ; 2) to compensate the eligible employees, including the Key Employees, for assuming “additional administrative and operational burdens imposed on the Debtor by its Chapter 11 case;” and 3) to allow the eligible employees, including the Key Employees, to use “their best efforts to ensure the maximization of estate assets for the benefits of creditors.”

Id. (internal citations omitted).

 [15]. Id. at 79.

Moreover, in the Board’s view, replacing the Key Employees would cause the Debtor to incur significant costs. Mr. Horsley testified that the process of replacing any one of the Key Employees could cost up to one years’ salary in order to cover the cost of a headhunter and other recruitment expenses. He added that, even if the Debtor were to find qualified replacements, it would not be able to quickly get these new employees “up to speed.” This cost-benefit analysis weighed heavily into the Board’s ultimate decision.

Id.

 [16]. See id.

 [17]. In the face of intense criticism, firms began to change their compensation practices to try to align pay with performance. See, e.g., Jensen & Murphy, supra note 9.

 [18]. See Brian J. Hall & Jeffrey B. Liebman, Are CEOs Really Paid Like Bureaucrats?, 113 Q.J. Econ. 653, 661–63 (1998) (finding that most of the pay increase for chief executive officers between 1980 and 1994 was in the form of stock options, which increased the percentage of a firm’s total compensation package weighted towards performance compensation).

 [19]. See Kevin J. Murphy, Executive Compensation, in 3B Handbook of Labor Economics 2485, 2491 (Orley Ashenfeller & David Card eds., 1999) (“[M]ost executive pay packages contain four basic components: a base salary, an annual bonus tied to accounting performance, stock options, and longterm incentive plans (including restricted stock plans and multi-year accounting-based performance plans).”). Stock compensation includes both outright grants of stock as well as restricted stock and stock options.

 [20]. The compensation consulting firm Equilar reported that in 2013, 63.8% of S&P 1500 companies used some form of performance-based equity compensation, 82.8% used short-term cash incentives, 15% had a discretionary cash bonus, and 8.3% had a long-term incentive plan tied to multiyear performance goals. Equilar, CEO Pay Strategies Report 4–5 (2014), https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/regulatory/us-aers-ceo-pay-strategies-report-2014-equilar-july-2014-020915.pdf. While Equilar does not aggregate these numbers, it is fair to assume that virtually all large firms use bonus compensation. The pre-bankruptcy use of stock compensation can be in and of itself sufficient to require a new compensation policy, as Chapter 11 usually ends with pre-bankruptcy shareholders receiving no recovery. See generally Notice of Filing of Amended Disclosure Statement for Debtors’ Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization Pursuant to Chapter 11 of the Bankr. Code, In re Hawker Beechcraft, Inc., 486 B.R. 264 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2013) (No. 12-11873) [hereinafter Hawker Beechcraft Disclosure].

 [21]. See Hall & Liebman, supra note 18. Firms have two alternatives to adjusting compensation policy in bankruptcy, but they are unattractive, for different reasons. One option is to adjust management’s compensation pre-bankruptcy by giving them large base salaries, which effectively reweights their compensation away from bonus and towards base. Doing so creates important risks for a firm, as news of bonus payments can disrupt negotiations with creditors and create liability for the executive who might find the payment clawed back as a fraudulent conveyance. Alternatively, the firm can avoid adjusting compensation until after bankruptcy, which creates the risk that managers might leave the firm rather than wait for an uncertain payment. See James Sprayregen et al., Recent Lessons on Management Compensation at Various Stages of the Chapter 11 Process, Financier Worldwide (Mar. 2013), https://www.financierworldwide.com/recent-lessons-on-management-compensation-at-various-stages-of-the-chapter-11-process/#.XEZb6S3Myu4.

 [22]. See, e.g., Mitchell A. Seider et al., Two Recent Decisions Highlight Pitfalls in Creating and Implementing Key Employee Incentive Plans for Executives in Bankruptcy Cases, Latham & Watkins: Client Alert (Sept. 24, 2012), https://www.lw.com/thoughtLeadership/employee-incentive
-plans-executives-bankruptcy (“[I]t may be difficult to replicate . . . employees’ pre-petition compensation during the Chapter 11 case because a significant part of their compensation may have been in the form of stock options (which are likely worthless in light of the bankruptcy proceedings) and performance bonuses based on metrics that are no longer achievable. Furthermore, these employees may seriously consider other employment opportunities that do not involve the risks inherent in working for a company in Chapter 11.”); Notice of (1) Filing of the Solicitation Version of the Amended Disclosure Statement for the Debtors’ Solicitation Version of the Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization Pursuant to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code and (2) Deadline for Parties to Object Thereto, In re Hawker Beechcraft, Inc., 486 B.R. 264 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2013) (No. 12-11873) (“[C]urrent compensation levels for each of the KERP Participants are below market levels largely because no MIP or Equity Investment Plan bonuses have been paid in recent years and also due to a decrease in earned commissions. The Debtors believe the KERP will aid the Debtors’ retention of the KERP Participants and will incentivize them to expend the additional efforts and time necessary to maximize the value of the Debtors’ assets.”).

 [23]. See, e.g., Nancy Rivera Brooks, Enron Execs Were Paid to Remain, L.A. Times (Dec. 7, 2001), http://articles.latimes.com/2001/dec/07/business/fi-12293.

 [24]. See, e.g., Henry, supra note 3 (detailing executive retention plans paid out in high-profile Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases).

 [25]. At the 2003 Annual Spring Conference of the American Bankruptcy Institute, a lawyer arguing against allowing KERPs worried very much that the failure to curb bankruptcy bonus abuse (in the form of the Key Employee Retention Plans that had become a routine part of bankruptcy practice) would result in congressional intervention. See Critical Vendor Motions, Retention Bonuses Headed for Endangered List, 39 Bankr. Ct. Decisions: Wkly. News & Comment 1 (Aug. 13, 2002); see also Keach, supra note 3.

 [26]. See M. Todd Henderson, Paying CEOs in Bankruptcy: Executive Compensation When Agency Costs Are Low, 101 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1543, 1543–44, 1570 (2007) (“According to [academic accounts of bankruptcy], the Bankruptcy Code’s preference for management operation of the debtor allows managers to extract rents in the form of higher salaries, big option grants, and lavish retention and emergence bonuses.”); Lynn M. LoPucki & William C. Whitford, Corporate Governance in the Bankruptcy Reorganization of Large, Publicly Held Companies, 141 U. Pa. L. Rev. 669, 740 (1993) (“In the course of our study, we became suspicious that some CEOs were using leverage generated from the power vested in the debtor-in-possession by the Bankruptcy Code to negotiate increases in their personal compensation.”); Lucien Ayre Bebchuk & Howard F. Chang, Bargaining and the Division of Value in Corporate Reorganization, 8 J.L. Econ. & Org. 253, 267 n.14 (1992) (“In reality, the incumbent management controls the agenda during this initial period [of Chapter 11 Bankruptcy].”).

 [27]. Alan Schwartz, A Contract Theory Approach to Business Bankruptcy, 107 Yale L.J. 1807, 1836 (1998) (noting Chapter 11 is preferable to Chapter 7 for current management, in terms of ability to manipulate the process for personal gain); see also Henderson, supra note 26, at 1574 (noting a potential factor favoring management in Chapter 11 is “the possibility that creditors will tolerate inefficient or unfair compensation to curry favor with CEOs, since the debtor has the exclusive right to propose a reorganization plan”); LoPucki & Whitford, supra note 26, at 692 (“[M]anagement of the debtor corporation routinely remains in office after [the bankruptcy] filing and has considerable power over both the business plan and the reorganization plan.”).

 [28]. One student researcher interviewed legendary bankruptcy attorney Harvey Miller in 2005 and reported:

Eventually, according to Miller, the negotiations come to point where the controlling distressed investors tell the CEO, “if you want to be CEO of the company, don’t fight

us—because if you fight and we win, you’re dead.” According to Miller, some management teams will eventually give in, often after the distressed investors have agreed to provide them with post-emergence employment contracts.

Paul M. Goldschmid, Note, More Phoenix Than Vulture: The Case for Distressed Investor Presence in the Bankruptcy Reorganization Process, 2005 Colum. Bus. L. Rev. 191, 266–67 (2005).

 [29].   See Henderson, supra note 26, at 1575–76 (2007) (“Thus, given the firm’s poor performance, whether or not it can be deemed to be the CEO’s fault, the firm should be able to pay the CEO less, but the costs of the next best alternative are so much higher that the CEO is actually in a stronger negotiating position.”).

 [30]. See LoPucki & Whitford, supra note 26, at 742 (“[I]n some reorganization cases management derives considerable power from their incumbency.”).

 [31]. See id. at 694–720 (describing the checks on management).

 [32]. In re Salant Corp., 176 B.R. 131, 132 (S.D.N.Y. 1994) (“The Bankruptcy Court approved the bonus to [the CEO] at the confirmation hearing . . . .”); see also In re Velo Holdings Inc., 472 B.R. 201, 204 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2012) (approving KERP during bankruptcy case).

 [33]. See, e.g., In re W. Pac. Airlines, Inc., 219 B.R. 575, 578 (D. Colo. 1998) (“[A] creditors committee serves something of a ‘watchdog’ function in bankruptcy and enjoys unique rights and responsibilities under the Code.”).

 [34]. Wei Jiang et al., Hedge Funds and Chapter 11, 67 J. Fin. 513, 527 n.10 (2012).

 [35]. See generally Jared A. Ellias, Do Activist Investors Constrain Managerial Moral Hazard in Chapter 11?: Evidence from Junior Activist Investing, 8 J. Legal Analysis 493 (2016) (finding activist investors actually reduce self-dealing and promote the goals of bankruptcy); Michelle M. Harner & Jamie Marincic, Committee Capture? An Empirical Analysis of the Role of Creditors’ Committees in Business Reorganizations, 64 Vand. L. Rev. 749 (2011) (providing data on the impact of creditors on bankruptcy proceedings).

 [36]. See Ellias, supra note 35, at 495 (“In Chapter 11, managers must obtain judicial approval for all major business decisions . . . [creditors] may inform the judge that management is abusing Chapter 11 and file motions seeking judicial relief.”).

 [37]. See Charles Jordan Tabb, The History of the Bankruptcy Laws in the United States, 3 Am. Bankr. Inst. L. Rev. 5, 35 (1995). (“In 1986 the United States Trustee system was established nationwide . . . . An attempt was made to relieve bankruptcy judges of administrative duties, thereby permitting them to focus more exclusively on their judicial role.”).

 [38]. See id.

 [39]. About the Program: The United States Trustee Program, U.S. Dep’t Just., https://www.justice.gov/ust/about-program (last updated Mar. 6, 2019).

       [40].     Id.

 [41]. See Objection of the U.S. Trustee to Debtors’ Motion Pursuant to Section 363(b) of the Bankr. Code for Authorization to Implement a Key Emp. Incentive Plan at 9, In re BearingPoint, Inc., 453 B.R. 486 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2011) (No. 09-10691) [hereinafter BearingPoint Objection].

The Motion is not supported by any indication that the costs of the KEIP are reasonable under the circumstances. To the contrary, the currently-prevailing view here appears to be that such proceeds will be insufficient to generate a recovery for unsecured creditors. Also, there is no basis on which to conclude that the $7.0 million cost of the Debtors’ revised bonus plan is reasonable . . . .

Id.

 [42]. That’s not to say that judges did not sometimes reject bonus plans. Levitz Judge Rejects Bankruptcy Bonus, Limits Severance Package, 2 Andrews Bankr. Litig. Rep. 7 (2005) (discussing Judge Burton Lifland’s rejection of a proposed retention bonus in the Levitz Homes bankruptcy when the company had mostly outsourced operation of its business to consultants).

 [43]. See In re Montgomery Ward Holding Corp., 242 B.R. 147, 155 (D. Del. 1999) (noting the discretion the bankruptcy court has to defer to management’s business judgment in approving bankruptcy bonus plans). Bankruptcy courts approved executive bonuses upon a showing by the debtor that: (i) the debtor used proper business judgment in creating the plan, and (ii) the plan is “fair and reasonable.” Emily Watson Harring, Walking and Talking like a KERP: Implications of BAPCPA Section 503(c) for Effective Leadership at Troubled Companies, 2008 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1285, 1293 (2008); see also George W. Kuney, Hijacking Chapter 11, 21 Emory Bankr. Dev. J. 19, 78–80 (2004) (summarizing the standard in pre-BAPCA cases). Kuney notes that this standard was either considered overly permissive or unnecessarily restrictive, depending on the particular biases of the critic. Id. at 80; accord Cornwell, supra note 4, at 493–94 (summarizing the pre-BAPCA standard).

 [44]. In re Brooklyn Hosp. Ctr., 341 B.R. 405, 409 (Bankr. E.D.N.Y. 2006); see also In re Aerovox, Inc., 269 B.R. 74, 79 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2001) (discussing the importance of the employees to the turnaround effort).

 [45]. See Brooklyn Hosp. Ctr., 341 B.R. at 412 (discussing the deliberations of the Board); see also In re Georgetown Steel Co., 306 B.R. 549, 554 (Bankr. D.S.C. 2004) (“The CEO described the deliberations of the Board of Directors with respect to the Retention Motion as well as the processes utilized to arrive at the final amount of the Retention Plan.”); Aerovox, 269 B.R. at 81–82 (“[T]he Board utilized sound business judgment in evaluating the need for and financial implications of the KERP. . . . [T]he Board met five times before approving the original KERP.”); Dickerson, supra note 12, at 97–103.

 [46]. See Paul R. Hage, Key Employee Retention Plans under BAPCPA? Is There Anything Left?, 17 J. Bankr. L. & Prac. 1, 15 (2008) (“[S]ection 503(c) prohibits payments to an insider ‘for the purpose of inducing such person to remain with the debtor’s business.’”). The BAPCPA mostly affected consumer bankruptcy, and the reform studied in this Article was one of the handful of provisions that altered business bankruptcy in a significant way.

 [47]. In re Global Home Prods., L.L.C., 369 B.R. 778, 783–84 (Bankr. D. Del. 2007) (quoting Karen Lee Turner & Ronald S. Gellert, Dana Hits a Roadblock: Why Post-BAPCPA Laws May Impose Stricter KERP Standards, 3 Bankr. Litig. Rep. 2, 2 (2006)); see also Edward E. Neiger, Bankruptcy Courts Continue to Approve Performance-Based Bonuses for Executives of Companies in Chapter 11, 3 Pratt’s J. Bankr. L. 356, 357 (2007).

 [48]. See 11 U.S.C. § 503 (2018); In re Dana Corp., 358 B.R. 567, 575–78 (summarizing the changes to the Bankruptcy Code); Skeel, supra note 12, at 928 (describing KEIPs). In sample cases, it is very clear that––in at least some instances­––the KEIP was designed more with a view to what the court would approve than what actually needed to provide incentive compensation to senior executives. For example, in the bankruptcy of Nortel, the debtor’s compensation consultant examined other recent KEIPs and provided its senior managers with a maximum number of how much money could be distributed in bonuses and how many people could be paid, and this was used to generate an incentive plan. See Declaration of John Dempsey in Support Debtors’ Motion for an Order Seeking Approval of Key Emp. Retention Plan and Key Exec. Incentive Plan, and Certain Other Related Relief at 5, In re Nortel Networks Inc., 426 B.R. 84 (Bankr. D. Del. Feb. 27, 2009) (No. 09-10138) [hereinafter Dempsey Declaration].

In determining the appropriate number of employees eligible, maximum program cost, and the size of awards to be granted, I reviewed Key Employee Incentive Plans that had been approved by bankruptcy courts in a number of recent chapter 11 cases. The companies for which these plans were approved reflect entities both inside and outside the technology sector as well as companies facing multi-jurisdictional issues, including SemGroup LLP, Quebecor World, Delphi Corporation, Dura Automotive, and Calpine Corporation.

Id. In Dempsey’s defense, Nortel was a large firm and the compared firms, albeit engaged in entirely different lines of business and headquartered in different cities, were also large firms. Nonetheless, the selection of compared firms is curious. In terms of the number of managers, he testified, “I advised Nortel management to select participants that would result in a population of employees totaling approximately 5% of the aggregate Nortel population, as this amount was well within the range of competitive market practice.” Id.

 [49]. See Skeel, supra note 12, at 928 (“[C]reditors have insisted in recent cases that the managers’ compensation be tied to the company’s progress under Chapter 11. The most straightforward strategy for rewarding managers who handle the case expeditiously is to base their compensation, at least in part, on the speed of the reorganization.”).

 [50]. See Hage, supra note 46, at 22–27 (discussing the early decisions); see also Revich, supra note 4, at 94.

 [51]. See In re Velo Holdings Inc., 472 B.R. 201, 211 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2012) (analyzing a proposed KEIP plan to insure the targets are “difficult to achieve”).

 [52]. See LoPucki & Whitford, supra note 26, at 694 (“Management also gains considerable power by being better informed than other interested parties.”).

 [53]. Of course, in some cases a 10% revenue increase can result from changed market conditions or political developments that improve the firm’s prospects with no increased effort from managers.

 [54]. In re Dana Corp., 351 B.R. 96, 102 n.3 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2006).

 [55]. In re Dana Corp, 358 B.R. 567, 576–77 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2006) (emphasis in original) (internal citations omitted).

 [56]. See Revich, supra note 4, at 116.

 [57]. See Bharath et al., supra note 10, at 24 (suggesting the use of KERPs contribute to more equitable Chapter 11 outcomes, as measured by the frequency of Absolute Priority Deviations).

 [58]. See, e.g., Victor Fleischer, Regulatory Arbitrage, 89 Tex. L. Rev. 227, 278–80 (2010).

 [59]. For evidence supporting this hypothesis surveyed, see generally infra Section III.B.1.

 [60]. See Margaret Howard, The Law of Unintended Consequences, 31 S. Ill. U. L.J. 451, 456 (2007); Allison K. Verderber Herriott, Toward an Understanding of the Dialectical Tensions Inherent in CEO and Key Employee Retention Plans During Bankruptcy, 98 Nw. U. L. Rev. 579, 615 (2004); Revich, supra note 4, at 112 (considering Judge Lifland’s decision in In re Dana Corp., which noted permissible incentive plans may have retentive effects).

 [61]. For evidence supporting this hypothesis surveyed, see infra Section III.B.2.

 [62]. Economic theory has long held that people respond to incentives. E.g., Gary S. Becker, Irrational Behavior and Economic Theory, 70 J. Pol. Econ. 1, 9 (1962).

 [63]. Karen Dillon, The Coming Battle over Executive Pay, Harv. Bus. Rev. (2009), https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-coming-battle-over-executive-pay.

 [64]. For evidence supporting this hypothesis surveyed, see infra Section III.B.3.

 [65]. See generally Data & Research, Bankr. Data, http://bankruptcydata.com/p/data-research (last visited Apr. 8, 2019). Next Generation Research’s Bankruptcy Data service is a commonly used data source for empirical bankruptcy studies. Accord, e.g., Kenneth M. Ayotte & Edward R. Morrison, Creditor Control and Conflict in Chapter 11, 1 J. Legal Analysis 511, 517 (2009).

 [66]. A portion of this larger sample was used previously in Jared A. Ellias, What Drives Bankruptcy Forum Shopping? Evidence from Market Data, 47 J. Legal Stud. 119, 124–26 (2018). I provide greater detail regarding construction of the larger sample. While this Article shares basic information on bankruptcy cases with that larger dataset, the data on executive compensation presented here were collected specifically for this project and are unique and new.

 [67]. “TRACE” is a complete record of all buying and selling of corporate bonds, with transaction-level data on all trades during the sample period. It is the standard source for bond data in empirical finance literature. “MarkIt” is a data provider that compiles trading in corporate loans. Bloomberg maintains records in trading of both listed and over-the-counter equity. I do not report results using TRACE, MarkIt, or Bloomberg data in this Article.

 [68]. Firms generally disclose executive compensation as part of their annual report or proxy statements for their annual meeting. See Fast Answers: Executive Compensation, U.S. Sec. & Exchange Comm’n, https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answers-execomphtm.html (last visited Apr. 8, 2019) (“The easiest place to look up information on executive pay is probably the annual proxy statement. Annual reports on Form 10-K and registration statements might simply refer you to the information in the annual proxy statement, rather than presenting the information directly.”).

 [69]. This means that the case study sample is drawn from a slightly broader universe than the larger sample, which is restricted to public firms with traded claims. I do not believe this introduces bias into the analysis, and it avoids any bias that could result from looking only at public firms. The results presented below are the same if I restrict the case study sample to the universe of firms with traded claims.

 [70]. In re Dana Corp, 358 B.R. 567, 576–77 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2006) (emphasis in original). (internal citations omitted); see also supra note 55 and accompanying text.

 [71]. One possible complaint about my methodology is that the 2009 and 2010 “post-reform” sample includes the bankruptcy cases that resulted from the financial crisis. The broad conclusions from the study come from the larger sample. The case study sample is used mostly to illustrate problems with the reform, provide institutional detail, and estimate the increase in costs, which should not be affected by the financial crisis and its aftermath.

 [72]. 11 U.S.C. § 327 (2018).

 [73]. See First Verified Monthly Application of Alston & Bird LLP as Counsel for the Debtors and Debtors-in-Possession for Allowance of Compensation and Reimbursement of Expenses Incurred for the Interim Period June 22, 2009 through July 31, 2009 at 2, In re Sea Launch Company, No. 09-12153 (Bankr. D. Del. Aug. 25, 2009); see also Fed. R. Bankr. P. 2016(a) (providing for the compensation of services provided to the debtor by professionals).

 [74]. Others have speculated that the new, post-reform statutory regime requires more attorney time and expense. See Jonathan C. Lipson, Where’s the Beef? A Few Words About Paying for Performance in Bankruptcy, 156 U. Pa. L. Rev. 64, 68 (2007).

 [75]. All of the nominal dollar amounts in the bills were adjusted to 2010 dollars using the Consumer Price Index.

 [76]. In Appendix Table 1, I use regression analysis to try to verify that the observed fee increase is not due to a difference in observable firm characteristics between the population of pre-reform Chapter 11 debtors and post-reform Chapter 11 debtors. The results suggest that, controlling for firm financial characteristics and industry, the 2005 bankruptcy reform is associated with a 118% increase in the debtor’s fees for time spent on bonus plans, a 102% increase in attorney’s hours devoted to the bonus plan, and a 110% increase in the percentage of the total bill for the case devoted to matters related to the bankruptcy bonus plan.

 [77]. Some firms may be more likely to enact bonus plans if, for example, a large part of their pre-bankruptcy compensation was in the form of stock that is unlikely to be worth anything after bankruptcy. Thus, it is possible that a composition effect drives the effect in Figure 1, if the cohort of Chapter 11 debtors pre-reform were firms that used more stock compensation than the cohort that came afterwards. I addressed the question of pre-bankruptcy compensation practices further in supra Part I.

 [78]. For example, if a firm’s CEO was paid $100 in the year before bankruptcy and $120 in the year the firm filed for bankruptcy, the test statistic is ($120-$100)/$100, or 12%.

 [79]. The firms in Table 2 all had historic and bankruptcy-year compensation data publicly available, either in securities filings or in the bankruptcy court documents that I reviewed to assemble the sample. It is possible that the missing firms are non-randomly selected, so the results in this Section should be interpreted cautiously. In general, firms tend to avoid disclosing executive compensation numbers if they can, viewing it as a trade secret, so the firms in Table 2 tend to skew towards the largest firms.

 [80]. From the large sample, both OTC Holdings and Regent Communications engaged in this type of planning. I studied both cases closely for my article, Do Activist Investors Constrain Managerial Moral Hazard In Chapter 11?: Evidence from Junior Activist Investing, supra note 35. Stumbling upon them—and their thoughtful and successful attempts to use bankruptcy planning to evade court review—inspired this project.

 [81]. One law firm that represents many large debtors in bankruptcy expressly warned its clients against this strategy, saying that it risked upsetting negotiations with creditors and created fraudulent conveyance risk. Sprayregen et al., supra note 21. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this practice is both common and continuing to this day. See Andrew Scurria, Takata Insiders Took in Millions Before Bankruptcy, Wall St. J. Pro: Bankr. (Aug. 10, 2017), https://www.wsj.com/articles/takata-insiders-took-in-millions-before-bankruptcy-1502405497.

 [82]. Disclosure Statement Under 11 U.S.C. § 1125 in Support of the Debtors’ Third Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization at 26–27, In re OTC Holdings Corp., No. 10-12636 (Bankr. D. Del. Nov. 2, 2010), ECF No. 263.

 [83]. See id.

 [84]. First Amended Disclosure Statement for the First Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization for Regent Commc’ns Corp., et al. at 24, In re Regent Commc’ns, Inc., No. 10-10632 (Bankr. D. Del. Mar. 22, 2010), ECF No. 128. A third non-case study sample, the 2009–2010 Chapter 11 of CCS Medical, involved similar bankruptcy planning and similarly allowed management to be paid bankruptcy-related bonuses without a judge finding that the plan satisfied the revised statute. See Transcript of Hearing re Debtors’ Motion for Order (a) Approving Bidding Procedures in Connection with Mktg. and Proposed Sale of Substantially All of the Debtors’ Assets, and (b) Granting Related Relief at 37–38, In re CCS Medical, Inc., No. 09-12390 (Bankr. D. Del. Nov. 23, 2009), ECF No. 673.

 [85]. Importantly, I only count bankruptcy bonuses that are bundled with the plan of reorganization and pay cash consideration as part of the analysis in this paragraph.

 [86]. See 11 U.S.C. § 1129 (2018).

 [87]. See In re Journal Register Co., 407 B.R. 520, 527, 537 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2009) (noting the court agreed that the confirmation of a plan is governed by section 1129, not section 503(c), of the Bankruptcy Code).

       [88].     Id. at 535.

 [89]. Id. at 528, 537.

 [90]. Id. at 538. In collecting data for Ellias, supra note 35, I observed other firms engage in similar behavior without first seeking court approval of a bonus plan. For example, Caraustar Industries paid management 50% of its 2009 incentive compensation on the effective date of the plan of reorganization. See Disclosure Statement for Debtors’ Joint Plan of Reorganization at 40, In re Caraustar Indus., Inc., No. 09-73830 (Bankr. N.D. Ga. May 31, 2009), ECF No. 21. Orleans Homebuilders paid $2.3 million in bonuses to forty senior managers as part of its plan of reorganization. See Debtor’s Second Amended Joint Plan of Reorganization at 44, In re Orleans Homebuilders, Inc., 561 B.R. 46 (Bankr. D. Del. 2010) (No. 10-10684). Other firms paying large bonuses as part of the plan—presumably for performance during the bankruptcy case—that filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and 2010 include: Lyondell Chemical Company ($27.75 million); Reader’s Digest Association ($12.9 million); Visteon Corporation ($8.1 million for twelve managers); Mesa Air Group; Inc. ($5.5 million); Six Flags, Inc. ($5.025 million for seven managers); Innkeepers USA Trust ($4.5 million); Almatis B.V. ($4.3 million); Tronox Incorporated ($3 million for four managers); Cooper-Standard Holdings, Inc. ($2.49 million for thirteen managers); Orleans Homebuilders, Inc. ($2.38 million for forty managers); NTK Holdings, Inc. (Nortek, Inc.) ($2 million); FairPoint Communications, Inc. ($1.8 million); Journal Register Company ($1.7 million); Affiliated Media, Inc. ($1.6 million for fifty employees); Centaur, L.L.C. ($1.5 million for three managers); Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Inc. ($1.48 million for 146 managers); Panolam Industries International, Inc. ($1 million); EnviroSolutions Holdings, Inc. ($1 million); Pliant Corporation ($0.87 million for one manager), International Aluminum Corporation ($0.65 million); Newark Group, Inc. ($0.5 million); Oriental Trading Company, Inc. ($0.45 million for fourteen managers); Neff Corp. ($0.35 million for two managers); and Regent Communications, Inc. ($0.31 million).

 [91]. Congress has long recognized the need for public disclosure of post-bankruptcy compensation and retention of bankruptcy insiders. See, e.g., 11 U.S.C. § 1129(a)(5)(B) (2018) (requiring disclosure of the identity of insiders who will be employed or retained by the debtor as well as their compensation).

 [92]. See Voluntary Petition (Chapter 11), In re Citadel Broadcasting Corp., No. 09-17442 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Dec. 20, 2009).

 [93]. Objection of Virtus Capital LLC and Kenneth S. Grossman Pension Plan to the Disclosure Statement for the Joint Plan of Reorganization of Citadel Broadcasting Corp. and Its Debtor Affiliates Pursuant to Chapter 11 of the Bankr. Code at 4–5, In re Citadel Broadcasting Corp., No. 09-17442 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Mar. 5, 2010), ECF No. 172. Post-bankruptcy equity incentive plans are largely outside the scope of this study because of data constraints. While I often observe firms setting aside post-reorganization equity for a management incentive plan as part of the plan of reorganization, I do not systematically observe the post-bankruptcy payouts. Citadel is an outlier case because it involved management misrepresenting the post-bankruptcy incentive plan to the court, with creditors learning about it and seeking some sort of remedy. The vast majority of Chapter 11 debtors do not become publicly traded immediately after bankruptcy; accordingly, there is little disclosure of post-bankruptcy equity compensation. The value of post-bankruptcy equity compensation is substantial and dwarfs all observed bankruptcy bonus plans (for the 2009 and 2010 sample, the aggregate amount of value in all of the bonus plans in the case study sample is $70 million; those same firms set aside approximately $387 million in aggregate management post-bankruptcy equity incentive plans). However, without information on post-bankruptcy distributions and understanding how equity was allocated across the employee base, it is impossible to determine how much of this equity actually flowed to management and how much may have flowed to management as a form of compensation for performance while the firm was in Chapter 11.

 [94]. See id.

 [95]. Reply of R2 Investments, LDC in Support of Motion Pursuant to 11 U.S.C. §§ 1142 and 105(a) to Direct Reorganized Debtors to Comply with Plan ¶ 5, In re Citadel Broadcasting Corp., No. 09-17442 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Oct. 29, 2010), ECF No. 507.009), ECF No. 1476. 17, 2009), ECF No. 1476.docket, so I couldn’.D.N.Y.  scienter
take appointment? approving such array, the c1

 [96]. Motion Pursuant to 11 USC §§ 1142 and 105(a) to Direct Reorganized Debtors to Comply with Plan at 2, In re Citadel Broadcasting Corp, No. 09-17442 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Oct. 6, 2010), ECF No. 498.

 [97]. Id. at 3.

       [98].     Id. at 2.

 [99]. See id. 1–5.

 [100]. Id. at 1.

 [101]. Id. at 2.

 [102]. Goldschmid, supra note 28, at 266–67.

 [103]. See supra Part II.

 [104]. An important limitation of the data is that in many cases, bonus plans were either incomplete when filed with the court or filed under seal. Accordingly, Table 3 reports the information that was publicly available both from bankruptcy court filings and from contemporaneous or post-bankruptcy SEC filings that filled in gaps from the court filings.

 [105]. This is consistent with anecdotal reports of practitioners. For example, a prominent creditor’s attorney told Bloomberg that “the amendment to the code changed the means, but not the value of these plans . . . [i]t’s just changed the way you get there, not necessarily how much management gets at the end.” Church, supra note 7.

 [106]. In expectation, the expected value of $100 in the future that will be received with 100% certainty is $100 ($100*100%). If management only has a 10% chance of receiving the bonus, in expectation that bonus is worth $10 ($100*10%). Thus, the board would need to propose a bonus plan that paid $1000 as part of a challenging incentive plan with a 10% ex ante probability of payout (because $1000*10% = $100) to provide the same level of motivation as a guaranteed retention bonus of $100.

 [107]. For example, if a bonus plan was tied to confirming a plan of reorganization by a certain date, we examined whether the bonus plan was approved by that date or if there was a subsequent extension.

 [108]. The exception is a higher observed rate of payout for firms with whole firm sale targets and payouts for emerging from bankruptcy. This likely reflects changes in bankruptcy practice, as it became more common for firms to go into Chapter 11 and conduct going-concern sales. See, e.g., Douglas G. Baird & Robert K. Rasmussen, The End of Bankruptcy, 55 Stan. L. Rev. 751, 751, 786–88 (2002) (discussing the rise in the use of Chapter 11 as a platform for the sale of a firm’s assets, often as a whole firm going-concern sale).

 [109]. This finding deserves two qualifications. As Table 4 shows, there is enough missing data to potentially bias the result. Additionally, bonus plans often have “tiers” of goals (as where, for example, a 10% revenue increase might yield $100 and a 15% revenue increase might yield $200), and I do not systematically examine enough information to determine which payout tier was reached in enough cases to report results.

 [110]. For example, if management would have worked for $100, but extracts extra rents of $50 for total compensation of $150, the extra $50 is money that could have otherwise been paid (in some form or another) to unsecured creditors in the event they are not being paid in full.

 [111]. In some cases, creditors file their own objections, either because they are secured creditors who are not represented by any official committee or because they want to act on their own, apart from the committee, for strategic reasons. I also summarize the litigation of these creditors as part of Table 4. The qualitative trends I discuss in this Section, while focusing on the official committee, are the same as the trends observed by unsecured creditors acting on their own.

 [112]. It is difficult to evaluate this because managers may simply propose an unreasonable bonus plan before moving the plan to what they know creditors will accept after negotiations and litigation. It is hard to know if management actually “moved” or simply went to where they always planned to be.

 [113]. Objection of the Official Comm. of Unsecured Creditors to the Motion of the Debtors and Debtors in Possession for Entry of an Order Approving a Key Employ. Incentive Plan at 8, In re Midway Games, Inc., No. 09-10465 (Bankr. D. Del. Mar. 27, 2009), ECF No. 203.

 [114]. Objection of the Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors to Debtor’s Motion for Order Approving the Implementation of Key Emp. Incentive Plan and Short Term Incentive Plan at 2, In re Hayes Lemmerz Int’l, Inc., No. 09-11655 (Bankr. D. Del. Aug. 14, 2009), ECF No. 460 [hereinafter Hayes Lemmerz Objection].

 [115]. Objection of the Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors to Debtor’s Motion for Order Authorizing Use of Cash Collateral for Payments Regarding HVM LLC Incentive Program at 28, In re Extended Stay Inc., No. 09-13764 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Oct. 26, 2009), ECF No. 530; Objection of Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors to Motion of the Debtors for an Order Authorizing the Debtors to Continue Their Short-Term Incentive Plan at 12–13, In re Merisant Worldwide, Inc., No. 09-10059 (Bankr. D. Del. Mar. 20, 2009), ECF No. 211.

 [116]. Objection of the Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors to: (A) Debtors’ Motion for an Order Authorizing the Debtors to Implement Severance and Non-Insider Retention Programs; and (B) Debtors’ Motion for an Order Authorizing the Implementation of the Visteon Incentive Program at

8–10, In re Visteon Corp., No. 09-11786 (Bankr. D. Del. Jul. 13, 2009), ECF No. 528.

 [117]. Objection of the Official Comm. of Unsecured Creditors to Debtors’ Motion for Order Authorizing Debtors to Adopt and Implement an Incentive Plan for Certain Key Employ. Pursuant to Sections 363(b)(1), 503(c)(3), and 105(a) of the Bankr. Code at 13, In re Foamex Int’l, Inc., 368 B.R. 383 (Bankr. D. Del. 2007) (No. 09-10560).

 [118]. Id. at 1–2.

 [119]. Id. at 2.

 [120]. Id. at 2–4.

     [121].     See id. at 2–5.

 [122]. Official Comm. Of Unsecured Creditors’ Objection to Debtors’ Motions to Shorten Notice Relating to Their (I) Motion for Approval of Exec. Comp. and Emp. Incentive Plan for Non-Debtor OpCo Subsidiaries and (II) Motion to File Related Exhibits Under Seal at 2–3, In re Trico Marine Servs., Inc., 450 B.R. 474 (Bankr. D. Del. 2011) (No. 10-12653).

 [123]. Debtors’ Reply to the Objection of the Official Comm. of Unsecured Creditors to Motion of the Debtors for Entry of an Order Approving the Debtors’ Key Employee Incentive Plan at 2, In re NEFF Co., No. 10-12610 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Jun. 28, 2010), ECF No. 199. In response, the debtors moved the “emergence incentive award” to the plan of reorganization. Id. at 3; see also supra note 90 and accompanying text.

 [124]. Hayes Lemmerz Objection, supra note 114, at 3.

 [125]. In one case, the Debtor complained that the U.S. Trustee’s objection “appears to be based on a form and ignores the evidence [the debtor] submitted.” Tronox’s Response to the Objection of the U.S. Tr. to Tronox’s Motion for Entry of an Order Approving Tronox’s Key Emp. Incentive Plan at 2, In re Tronox, Inc., 503 B.R. 239 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2009) (No. 09-10156).

 [126]. See generally Objection of the U.S. Tr. to Debtor’s Motion for Order Approving Debtors’ Key Mgmt. Incentive Plan, In re Lear Corp., No. 09-14326 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Jul. 20, 2009), ECF No. 161.

 [127]. Id. at 1–2, 6.

 [128]. See id. at 7.

 [129]. Id.

 [130]. Id.

 [131]. See id.

 [132]. U.S. Tr.’s Objection to Debtors’ Motion for Entry of an Order Authorizing Incentive Payments to Debtors Employees at 3, In re Noble Int’l Ltd., No. 09-51720 (Bankr. E.D. Mich. Apr. 22, 2009), ECF No. 60.

 [133]. U.S. Tr.’s Objection to the Debtors Motion for Entry of an Order Approving the Debtor’s Incentive Plan and Authorizing Payments Thereunder Pursuant to §§ 363(b) and 503(b) at 2, In re Vermillion, Inc., No. 09 -11091 (Bankr. D. Del. May 6, 2009), ECF No. 42.

 [134]. BearingPoint Objection, supra note 41, at 7.

 [135]. See Kan Nishida, Demystifying Text Analytics Part 3 — Finding Similar Documents with Cosine Similarity Algorithim, Medium: Learn Data Science (June 23, 2016), https://blog.exploratory
.io/demystifying-text-analytics-finding-similar-documents-with-cosine-similarity-e7b9e5b8e515.

 [136]. See Letter from Assistant Attorney Gen. Ronald Weich, to U.S. Senator Charles E. Grassley 1 (Mar. 5, 2012), http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/Letter031312.pdf.

 [137]. Id. at 2.

 [138]. See Jonathan Randles, Westmoreland Paid Millions in Executive Bonuses in Year Before Bankruptcy, Wall St. J. (Nov. 9, 2018), https://www.wsj.com/articles/westmoreland-paid-millions-in-executive-bonuses-in-year-before-bankruptcy-1541804141.

 [139]. See Second Monthly Application of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, Co-Counsel for Debtors and Debtors in Possession, for Interim Allowance of Compensation and for the Reimbursement of Expenses for Services Rendered During the Period from March 1, 2009 through March 31, 2009, Ex. B at 14, In re Foamex International Inc., No. 09-10560 (Bankr. D. Del. May 11, 2009), ECF No. 390.