Two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions demonstrate that the corporate attribution doctrine is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

The FTX Group, an international cryptocurrency exchange platform, spectacularly collapsed in November 2022, resulting in FTX Trading Limited and 101 affiliated companies filing for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The Australian arm of the FTX group, FTX Australia Pty Ltd (‘FTX Aust’) and FTX Express Pty Ltd (‘FTX Express’) (collectively the ‘Companies’) was placed into administration in Australia shortly before the Chapter 11 filing.

Court approval of a sale process in receivership or Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (“BIA”) proposal proceedings is generally a procedural order and objectors do not have an appeal as of right; they must seek leave and meet a high test in order obtain it. However, in Peakhill Capital Inc. v.

Celsius creditors feeling the heat over preference claims

The High Court has reaffirmed the test to be applied in considering an application to dismiss a bankruptcy summons grounded on a judgment.

The bankruptcy process in Ireland involves multiple steps and the debtor can seek to bring it to a halt at each step. Debtors often seek to rerun effectively the same arguments at each step, ignoring previous findings by the courts. One such step is an application to dismiss a bankruptcy summons.

The Irish High Court has determined that the liquidation of an Irish aircraft leasing company, which was a 100% subsidiary of a Russian company expressly subject to EU sanctions, rebuts the presumption that the company was controlled by the Russian parent for the purpose of EU sanctions.

This enables the liquidators to deal with the assets without costly and time-consuming derogation applications.

Background

The Hong Kong High Court has found that cryptocurrencies are property in a landmark case, further boosting the city’s virtual asset industry and its ambition to become the Asian crypto hub.

Irish company law provides that if a charge granted by a company is not registered in the Companies Registration Office (CRO) within 21 days of its creation, it is void against a liquidator and any creditor of the company. There is a duty imposed on a company which grants a charge to register the charge in the CRO but the creditor taking the charge can also do so.

Diamond Rock Developments Ltd (the Company) granted a mortgage over a property. That mortgage was registered in the Land Registry but was not registered in the CRO.

If you supply goods, the simplest step that you can take to reduce your exposure to a customer’s insolvency is to use effective retention of title (RoT).

However not all RoT clauses are effective and we see many RoT claims rejected in insolvency.

By default, once you sell goods on credit:

• the goods belong to the customer; and
• the customer owes you the purchase price.

This means that if an insolvency practitioner (IP) is appointed to the customer:

Corporate insolvency numbers continued to appear artificially low in 2022. The expectation is that they will rise once businesses need to deal with the aftermath of Government pandemic supports and, in particular, start to pay warehoused taxes.