[iav]

you need a lot more than 2 bidders for the theory to hold. Repeating the auction just seems pointless, but another avenue could be for the assets to not be sold, and the claimants to receive 100% of the equity of the business. Then over time they can potentially see a better recovery than what they are getting from a sale.

[JumpCrisscross]

> you need a lot more than 2 bidders for the theory to hold

Wrong. Vickrey auctions are well studied in single-item auctions even with two bidders [1]. (They perform between 4/3 and 2 compared to an optimal omniscient auction. Not solved. But not unstudied.)

> claimants to receive 100% of the equity of the business

This is Chapter 7. The bankruptcy estate already legally owns the asset, not Jones.

[1] https://www.timroughgarden.org/papers/bk.pdf Examples 4.6 and 5.2

[amyames]

The trustee gets something like 3% over $1million in liquidated assets.

Call it 52,000 from the onion sale.

well now someone says I could have bought it for 10 million.

trustee now gets $300,000. They’re not going to get in the way.

[JumpCrisscross]

Why do you think this is relevant? (Everyone is ostensibly trying to maximise the price.)