Ethics, bankruptcy and greed: the unintended consequences for landlords of the 2005 bankruptcy amendments

摘要

The 2005 amendments to the United States Bankruptcy Code dramatically shifted the relative power of commercial landlords vis-a-vis their tenants. Landlords lobbied Congress for these amendments to capture the option value of unexpired commercial leases. The result has been a decrease in the number of successful retail reorganisations. Viewed purely from a profit making perspective, the landlords' actions are hard to criticise. However, ethical theories, such as Integrated Social Contracts Theory (ISCT) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), envision a broader set of responsibilities in a business context, to which the landlords did not adhere in their quest for higher profits.