Good day and welcome to WSJ Pro Bankruptcy's Daily Briefing. It's Wednesday, June 7. In today's newsletter, the appellate ruling on Purdue Pharma's chapter 11 plan endorsed the legality of third-party releases but made them harder to come by, Pro Bankruptcy's Jodi Xu Klein writes. Elsewhere, many commercial landlords are at heightened risk of default because of how their mortgages are structured, and Indian education startup Byju's opened a new front in a legal battle with its lenders.

Pro Take: Purdue’s bankruptcy deal with Sacklers raises bar for others. In winning an appeals court’s approval to resolve opioid lawsuits against Purdue Pharma's Sackler family owners, they had to clear a new, stringent list of criteria that set a high bar for others seeking relief from mass lawsuits, Pro Bankruptcy's Jodi Xu Klein writes.

While the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York backed Purdue's chapter 11 plan, the decision also put new limits on bankruptcy courts’ authority that will make it harder for other corporate wrongdoers to use a similar path.

Purdue’s request to extend a legal reprieve to the Sacklers cleared all seven factors the appeals court laid out to consider when bankruptcy courts should protect solvent third parties from litigation. That also suggests that releases will be handed out more sparsely, even in a jurisdiction that has been historically receptive.

Interest-only loans come due for beleaguered commercial landlords. Many of the property owners with commercial mortgages coming due are vulnerable to default in part because of how they are structured—often as interest-only loans with the entire principal balance due at maturity.

Interest-only loans as a share of new commercial mortgage-backed securities issuance increased to 88% in 2021, up from 51% in 2013, according to Trepp. Typically, owners pay off this debt by getting a new loan or selling the building. Now, steeper borrowing costs and lenders’ growing reluctance to refinance these loans are raising the likelihood that many of them won’t be paid back. 

Corporate bankruptcies are running at fastest pace since 2010. Corporate bankruptcy filings are running at the fastest pace since 2010 after 54 more more companies filed in May, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The 286 filings this year through May are the most since 402 companies filed for protection through the same period in 2010. Vice Group, the parent of Vice Media, and Monitronics International, the parent of Brinks Home Security, were among the month's biggest bankruptcies.

"Higher interest rates and a slowing economy are pushing many companies over the edge," S&P analysts wrote in a report Tuesday.

S&P tracks bankruptcy filings of public and private companies with public debt and a minimum of $2 million in assets or liabilities at the time of filing, in addition to private companies that have at least $10 million in assets or liabilities.

• Top Morgan Stanley M&A banker to join law firm Paul Weiss. Rob Kindler, Morgan Stanley’s global chair of mergers and acquisitions, who over a 23-year run as a banker became a fixture in the tightknit world of deal advisory, will join Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in the fall as a corporate partner and global chair of M&A.

Crypto crackdown reaches Coinbase. The Securities and Exchange Commission ratcheted up its push to rein in the crypto industry, suing Coinbase for allegedly operating an unregistered securities exchange on the heels of a similar lawsuit against Binance.

The regulator's lawsuits — against the largest crypto exchange in the U.S. and the largest in the world — build on the SEC's strategy of showing why its regulations apply to crypto activities, with increasing focus on the biggest players rather than just the companies and currencies at the margins.

• Heard on the Street: SEC’s Coinbase Complaint Sets Off Battle for Crypto’s Future

Share your tips, suggestions and feedback with the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy team: Soma Biswas; Alexander Gladstone; Jodi Xu Klein; Akiko Matsuda; Alexander Saeedy; Andrew Scurria; Becky Yerak. 

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