Law360, New York ( August 18, 2014, 10:26 AM EDT) -- A Chapter 11 plan can only be confirmed if it does not discriminate unfairly and is "fair and equitable" to any nonaccepting impaired class. In this case, the issue was whether the debtor's projected "reorganization value" exceeded its debts such that the class of equity interests was entitled to a recovery. In re Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd.[1] presented the court with a complex question of value because the debtors' industry offered few reliable benchmarks for projecting future earnings — usually the key metric in valuation analysis. The speculative nature of rates for the debtors' dry bulk shipping business made discounted cash flow (DCF) estimates unreliable and the court instead gave the most weight to an alternative methodology — net asset value (NAV). Unfortunately for the official committee of equity holders, the only valuation that put equity in the money was the rejected DCF....