Nicola Sharp of Rahman Ravelli considers a case that shows the courts’ reluctance to expand the jurisdiction of equity to award compound interest in common law claims.

A majority of the Supreme Court recently held that an insolvent company does not suffer any recoverable loss if payments are made from its bank accounts that discharge a debt owed by that company.  This decision adds to the growing case law on the Quincecare duty.

The claim against HSBC

Economic indicators tell us 2023 is set to be a challenging year with many countries still struggling to recover from the cost of the pandemic, combined with the impacts of the war in Ukraine driving up energy and food costs globally along with inflation gripping most western nations.

With the current economic difficulties affecting the tech sector, a number of companies who took Future Fund investment during the pandemic have been faced with the following realities:

The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) has made what is understood to be the first Remediation Contribution Order under the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) in connection with the remediation of building safety defects at a high-rise residential block at 9 Sutton Court Road, in London.

The latest insolvency statistics in the UK make for grim reading. Per the government’s official assessment, 1,964 corporate insolvencies took place in December 2022, 32% higher than in the same month in the previous year and 76% higher than the number registered three years previously pre-pandemic. With inflation and energy costs remaining high and government support rolling back, companies will be taking whatever steps they can to remain in business.

Although the IMF recently announced at Davos that it would upgrade its global economic forecasts, with an improvement predicted in the later part of 2023 and into 2024, times remain difficult for many companies and their lenders – and are likely to remain so for a while yet.

As 2023 gets underway, we've taken the opportunity here to look at what we saw in the European distressed market in 2022, as well as looking ahead to what we expect to see in the months to come.

A predicted wave of insolvencies on the horizon has been a recurring theme in the UK press since the start of the first Covid-19 lockdown. Most people would have predicted that forced closure of businesses and the restriction on consumers' ability to spend would lead to an increase in business and personal insolvency numbers. In reality, the wave didn't appear - at least not yet. In this blog we discuss the reasons why and whether the trends we are seeing might suggest a wave is coming in 2023.

What stopped the wave?

While many businesses (particularly in the retail, leisure and hospitality industries) will have been hoping to capitalise on a busy festive period, sadly for many the busy period came too late as corporate insolvencies rose again in December. Overall, company insolvencies were 32% higher than December 2021, and 76% higher than in December 2019 (i.e.