The High Court has recently granted a receiver's application for an order that the grantor company and its sole director deliver up documentation relating to the company's affairs.

Ribble Limited was placed into receivership. The receiver, Mr Whitley, wrote to Ribble's sole director, Mr Kooiman, seeking information necessary to identify collateral secured by a general security agreement (GSA) between Ribble and the secured creditor, under which Mr Whitley was appointed. Mr Kooiman opposed Mr Whitley's application, arguing that:

Ebert Construction Limited v Sanson concerned the question of whether payments made by a third party under a 'direct agreement' to finance construction are payments made by the company in liquidation for the purposes of the insolvent transaction regime. Direct agreements are an agreement between the developer, builder and financier of a construction project. The agreement in this case obliged the financier to make progress payments directly to the builder throughout the duration of the project.

In the UK case of CFL Finance Limited v Rubin and Ors, a creditor had sought to make an individual bankrupt. A creditors' meeting was held.  At the meeting, a proposal for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement was approved by the creditor that held the largest portion of debt (and therefore 90.43% of the vote).  The other two creditors voted against the proposal.

The New Zealand and UK Arbitration Acts generally require court proceedings to be stayed if the parties have agreed to resolve disputes through arbitration.

In a recent address to the Insolvency Lawyers Association, the new Chancellor of the High Court, Sir Geoffrey Vos, discussed briefly the effect of that statutory stay upon winding-up petitions.

James Developments Limited (JDL) went into liquidation on 6 July 2009.

In November 2012, the liquidator issued proceedings against a trust for repayment of a loan, six years and one month after the loan was made.  The trustees argued the claim was time-barred.  The liquidator argued there had been a fraudulent cover-up of the loan and that the High Court should postpone the limitation period under section 28 of the Limitation Act 1950 (Act).

The sole role of ICS, the company at issue in the recent decision of the New South Wales Supreme Court in In the matter of Independent Contractor Services (Aust) Pty Ltd (in liquidation) (No 2) [2016] NSWSC 106, was to be the trustee of the similarly named ICS Trust.  Previous litigation had confirmed that the trust was not a sham and that all ICS's assets were trust assets.  In the present decision, the judge held that all expenses incurred by ICS were expenses incurred as trustee, and therefore ICS (and the liquidator) had a right to be indemnified for those e

Castlereagh Properties Limited (Castlereagh) and Gibbston Water Holdings Limited (Water Holdings) were both companies in David Henderson's Property Venture group. Castlereagh and Water Holdings entered into a sale and purchase agreement (SPA), under which Water Holdings sold all of its shares in Gibbston Water Services Limited (Water Services) to Castlereagh for $1.  Water Holdings was subsequently put into liquidation.

On 25 July 2013 the Court of Appeal issued its final judgment in Farrell v Fences & Kerbs Limited [2013] NZCA 329. The final judgment related to three conjoined appeals in which an interim judgment had been delivered on 27 March 2013 (Farrell v Fences & Kerbs Limited [2013] 3 NZLR 82). The interim judgment held that to rely on the defence to setting aside a voidable transaction in section 296(3)(c) of the Companies Act 1993 "new value" was required to be given at the time the payment that is sought to be set aside was made.

In the recent case MSI (Holdings) Pty Ltd v Mainstreet International Group Ltd, the Queensland Supreme Court confirmed that receivers of a company in liquidation can commence legal proceedings in the name of the company without leave of the court, when those proceedings relate to the recovery of secured property.

In the Court of Appeal decision of Herbert v New Zealand Guardian Trust Company Limited, the Court declined to grant Mrs Herbert's appeal in relation to the High Court's refusal to approve her creditor's proposal (see the summary in our October 2011 update).