Introduction

Rather unfortunately, there are no statutory provisions available to a company to set aside a statutory demand. If a company is served with a statutory demand and disputes the alleged debt, save for agreeing with the alleged creditor not to present a winding-up petition, it has no alternative but to seek relief from the court and obtain an injunction restraining the presentation of a winding-up petition.

A crucial aspect of cross-border insolvency cooperation is the recognition of foreign proceedings and providing assistance to foreign office holders. A helpful explanation of the purpose of recognition was provided by Lord Hoffman in Cambridge Gas:“[t]he purpose of recognition is to enable the foreign office holder or the creditors to avoid having to start parallel insolvency proceedings and to give them the remedies to which they would have been entitled if the equivalent proceedings had taken place in the domestic forum”.