This decision provides strong support to examiners using their commercial judgment and helps to clarify their role in restructuring companies in Ireland via examinership, Ireland’s main corporate rescue mechanism. Warren Baxter of Deloitte comments on the implications for Irish companies looking to restructure following the High Court’s ruling in the examinership of Ladbrokes’ Irish business.

In the decades before 2008, Iceland had a stable and prosperous economy, built on fishing, tourism, aluminium smelting and - to an extent that grew rapidly over time - financial services. Then, in late 2008, following the difficulties experienced by the country's major privately owned commercial banks in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on deposits in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the banking system and the Icelandic krona ("ISK") collapsed.

In the autumn of 2008 the Icelandic financial system faced severe difficulties. The failure of the country’s three largest banks, Kaupthing Bank (“Kaupthing”), Glitnir Bank (“Glitnir”) and Landsbanki (“LBI”), led to them being taken over by the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority under new powers granted by Act No 125/2008 on the Authority for Treasury Disbursements due to Unusual Financial Market Circumstances.

21/2/2012: Who has had the better crisis: Ireland or Iceland? Many would say Iceland, which Friday won a Fitch upgrade that restored it fully to investment-grade status; that puts it a step ahead of Ireland, which still has a "junk" rating from Moody's. Short-term, this verdict is probably right. But longer-term, Ireland's euro membership may bring benefits. Both countries were brought down by reckless risk taking from outsize banking systems.

When Sigurjón Árnason, former chief executive of Landsbanki, appeared before Iceland's independent "truth commission" last summer, he recalled the sense of confidence that pervaded the country's banking sector until 2008. It had "not occurred to anyone that there was a remote chance of a collapse like that which [would] later come to pass", he said, according to the long-awaited commission report into the Icelandic bank crash published April 12, the Financial Times reported.