The High Court recently granted an application under s 292 Companies Act 1993 to set aside substantial payments made on behalf of Northern Crest Investment Limited (in liquidation) (NCI) to satisfy a debt owed to Robt. Jones Holdings Limited (RJH).
The Supreme Court of Victoria has recently considered whether trust property is subject to the priority regime provided for in section 556 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (the Australian equivalent of New Zealand's Schedule 7 of the Companies Act 1993). It also considered whether a trustee's right of indemnity is subject to the obligations of receivers under section 433 of that Act, to pay employee entitlements in priority out of assets subject to a circulating security interest.
In Fielding v The Burnden Group Limited (BGL) the English High Court dismissed an application for the liquidator to be held personally liable for the costs of a successful appeal against the rejection of a proof of debt.
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.
In our June 2016 update, we discussed the Court of Appeal's decisions in Madsen-Ries v Petera[2016] NZCA 103, Calvert v Reynolds [2016] NZCA 151, and Petterson v Browne [2016] NZCA 189. In all three cases leave was sought to appeal to the Supreme Court. Leave was granted to the applicant companies in Petterson v Browne, but declined in all other cases. 
The English High Court in Powertrain Ltd, Re [2015] EWHC B26 considered the issue of whether a liquidator should be authorised to effect further distributions in favour of a company's known creditors without regard to possible further claims that could emerge against the company.
The Court noted that there is a balance to be struck between the desirability of distributing assets to known creditors sooner rather than later and the potential injustice of leaving someone who has a valid claim with no effective remedy.
In Stojkov v Kamal [2015] NZHC 2513 a creditor, Mr Stokjov, gave notice to the appointed liquidator, Mr Kamal, for a meeting of creditors to be called. Mr Kamal did not call the meeting and maintained that the notice was given out of time. Mr Stokjov reasonably pointed out that this was plainly incorrect. Mr Kamal, despite clearly being in breach of his duty, still refused to call the meeting and later claimed (quite irrelevantly) that the cost of the meeting was not justified.
Syntax Holdings (Auckland) Ltd (in liquidation) v Bishop involved a claim by the liquidators of Syntax Holdings (Auckland) Ltd that Mr and Mrs Bishop (as directors) had breached certain duties to the company (and its creditors) under the Companies Act 1993.
In what seems to be an unrelenting trend, new figures released this month by the British Solicitors' Regulation Authority (SRA), have disclosed that 30 of the top-200 UK law firms are in serious financial difficulty and have entered into "intensive engagement" with the SRA. While no names were named, it was revealed that these firms were among a wider group of 400 UK firms that were under active management by the regulator.
In Cukurova Finance International Ltd v Alfa Telecom Turkey Ltd [2013] UKPC 2, the Privy Council held that a borrower may claim relief from forfeiture notwithstanding that the forfeited security has been appropriated by the lender in satisfaction of a debt.