For professionals
Chapter 11 debtors and CROs: putting the archive into the sale
The company has filed Chapter 11. Its sale plan centres on operating assets, and nobody has put a value on years of Teams, Slack or email history.
A 363 sale can offer that archive as a separate lot, and the Spirit Airlines case is the working example.
01
Who oversees the sale
A Chapter 11 debtor in possession normally carries on operating. Anything outside the ordinary course needs the judge's approval. The US Trustee oversees the case: for Spirit, it named the consumer privacy ombudsman on 2026-07-17, and the court confirmed her on 2026-07-23.
02
Decide the scope before a bidder does
After the ombudsman reported, Google gave up five datasets on 2026-09-09, passenger records and timecards among them, and kept its $10.0M price. That concession came late and under pressure. Settle your own exclusions before bidding opens.
Email and chat about internal work
Customer payment and transaction data
Process documents, SOPs, wikis
Payroll, timecards, HR files
Tickets, projects, CRM activity
Health and safety-program records
Code and technical docs
Partners' confidential files under NDA
| Usually keep in | Often exclude |
|---|---|
| Email and chat about internal work | Customer payment and transaction data |
| Process documents, SOPs, wikis | Payroll, timecards, HR files |
| Tickets, projects, CRM activity | Health and safety-program records |
| Code and technical docs | Partners' confidential files under NDA |
03
An operating debtor has an advantage
Systems are still live, admins are still employed and buyers can sample data directly. That is the best moment to test the market. Once staff leave and subscriptions lapse, it gets much harder.
Next steps: section 363 sales of data, stalking horse bids and Subchapter V for smaller debtors.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Can a Chapter 11 debtor sell its data archive?
Yes, with court approval for a sale outside the ordinary course. Spirit Airlines is the reported example.
Will the US Trustee get involved?
The US Trustee supervises administration and, in Spirit's case, appointed a privacy ombudsman for the data sale.
Should we exclude employee data?
Many sellers do. In Spirit's case, employee records drew the most objections.
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Sources
Every number on this page links back to one of these.
- 1U.S. Courts: Chapter 11 bankruptcy basicsuscourts.gov
- 2Chapter11Cases (Stretto): docket report on the Spirit Airlines de-identified data salechapter11cases.com
- 3The Next Web: ombudsman backs Google's purchase of Spirit Airlines datathenextweb.com
- 4Skift: the list of objections to Spirit's data sale keeps growing (12 Oct 2026)skift.com
- 511 U.S.C. § 363: use, sale or lease of property (Cornell LII)law.cornell.edu
- 611 U.S.C. § 332: consumer privacy ombudsman (Cornell LII)law.cornell.edu
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