Treasury Recommends Retaining Orderly Liquidation Authority

On February 21, 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department released its long-awaited report on the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) established under Title II of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the Dodd‑Frank Act).

The report, Orderly Liquidation Authority and Bankruptcy Reform (the Report), recommends retaining OLA and adopting a new Chapter 14 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (the Code) to make resorting to OLA proceedings less likely.  While there have been many criticisms of OLA in the past, as reflected in the April 21, 2017 Presidential Memorandum instructing the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury) to prepare the Report, Treasury ultimately proposed only modest changes to OLA designed to clarify treatment of creditors, tighten the terms for funding from the Orderly Liquidation Fund (OLF) line of credit from Treasury, and strengthen judicial review of the decision to initiate OLA.