Chesswood Group Limited's U.S. Chapter 15 cases — ancillary to a court-supervised Ontario CCAA restructuring — were used principally to recognize the Canadian proceeding and to enforce Canadian vesting orders over the debtors' U.S.-sitting assets, and now sit in final wind-down. FTI Consulting Canada Inc., as foreign representative, filed parallel Chapter 15 petitions on October 30, 2024 for fourteen Chesswood debtor entities, asking the Delaware court to recognize the CCAA case as a foreign main proceeding and to give U.S. effect to the Canadian sale and vesting process (Chapter 15 First Day DeclarationDkt. 1).
The filing traced back to a borrowing-base collapse under the debtors' revolving senior secured facility — the group's primary working-capital line, administered by Royal Bank of Canada as administrative and collateral agent and secured by receivables and pool assets. The facility's deficiency widened from roughly US$50 million to about US$92 million, and Chesswood disclosed covenant non-compliance on June 14, 2024; a string of lender waivers, each with an expiring deadline, kept the line alive until support lapsed in October 2024. Liquidity pressure had already driven an August 2024 sale of the Vault subsidiaries for C$60 million, and the Ontario Securities Commission issued a failure-to-file cease trade order on August 16, 2024. By the time of the CCAA commencement and Chapter 15 filings, the group — a Toronto-based specialty finance platform spanning U.S. equipment finance (Pawnee Leasing) and Canadian consumer auto finance (Rifco), with roughly 166 employees — had exhausted out-of-court options (Chapter 15 First Day DeclarationDkt. 1).
Because the value and operations were concentrated in the Canadian CCAA case, the Chapter 15 track stayed narrow: rather than a U.S. plan or DIP facility, the debtors used recognition to sell assets through Canadian vesting orders enforced in Delaware, including the Pawnee equipment-finance transaction, which the court approved free and clear of liens over no objection. With the principal dispositions completed and the foreign representative's final report submitted, the individual debtor Chapter 15 cases have been closed as their assets were administered, leaving the ancillary proceeding to run off through final decree.
