Although the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (“CCAA”) provides scant guidance, it is a well established procedure in a CCAA proceeding for the Court to order a claims process and to delegate powers to review creditors claims to a CCAA Monitor. Recognizing the gaps in the legislation, the Nova Scotia Supreme Court recently reviewed and clarified the basis of a Monitor’s authority to conduct a claims bar process in the CCAA restructuring of ScoZinc Ltd.

Set-off is a powerful and often under-appreciated insolvency remedy in Canada. A recent decision of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench highlighted the importance of the doctrine and examined the requirements for a claim of equitable set-off in the context of a corporate group.

The right to assert valid set-off claims is expressly preserved in Canadian insolvency legislation. The remedy applies such that creditors may set-off (or net-out) amounts owing to them by an insolvent party, against amounts otherwise payable by them to the insolvent party.

Call it a sign of the times: the past decade has produced the ten largest bankruptcies in the United States.

Based on disclosed assets in its recent bankruptcy filing, MF Global has taken the spot just ahead of Chrysler as the eighth-largest United States bankruptcy (as ranked by New Generation Research on the basis of pre-petition assets).

The Top Ten list¹ is presented below, with a brief commentary on the circumstances of bankruptcies, each of which has significantly impacted the United States and global economies.