The Luxembourg act of 28 October 2022 introducing the procedure of administrative dissolution without liquidation (procédure de dissolution administrative sans liquidation, the "Administrative Dissolution Procedure") (the "Act") has just been published and will enter into force on 1st February 2023.
Background and objective
The purpose of the Act is to dissolve empty shell companies within a short timeframe at reduced costs for the Luxembourg State.
The Act of 17 December 2021 has extended the transitional measures provided for by the Act of 23 September 2020 until 31 December 2022. In practice, Luxembourg-based companies can hold either virtual board and shareholder meetings, even if their articles of association provide otherwise, or physical meetings if they respect the applicable sanitary conditions.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtors’ attempt to shield contributions to a 401(k) retirement account from “projected disposable income,” therefore making such amounts inaccessible to the debtors’ creditors.[1] For the reasons explained below, the Sixth Circuit rejected the debtors’ arguments.
Case Background
A statute must be interpreted and enforced as written, regardless, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, “of whether a court likes the results of that application in a particular case.” That legal maxim guided the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in a recent decision[1] in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtor’s repeated filings and requests for dismissal of his bankruptcy cases in order to avoid foreclosure of his home.
On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton (Case No. 19-357, Jan. 14, 2021), a case which examined whether merely retaining estate property after a bankruptcy filing violates the automatic stay provided for by §362(a) of the Bankruptcy Code. The Court overruled the bankruptcy court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in deciding that mere retention of property does not violate the automatic stay.
Case Background
When an individual files a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case, the debtor’s non-exempt assets become property of the estate that is used to pay creditors. “Property of the estate” is a defined term under the Bankruptcy Code, so a disputed question in many cases is: What assets are, in fact, available to creditors?
Once a Chapter 7 debtor receives a discharge of personal debts, creditors are enjoined from taking action to collect, recover, or offset such debts. However, unlike personal debts, liens held by secured creditors “ride through” bankruptcy. The underlying debt secured by the lien may be extinguished, but as long as the lien is valid it survives the bankruptcy.
A Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan requires a debtor to satisfy unsecured debts by paying all “projected disposable income” to unsecured creditors over a five-year period. In a recent case before the U.S.
One of the objectives of the Bankruptcy Code is to ensure that each class of creditors is treated equally. And one of the ways that is accomplished is to allow the debtor’s estate to claw back certain pre-petition payments made to creditors. Accordingly, creditors of a debtor who files for bankruptcy are often unpleasantly surprised to learn that they may be forced to relinquish “preferential” payments they received before the bankruptcy filing.