Judgment was handed down last week on the substantial directors' duties and wrongful trading claims brought against former directors of various BHS companies^[1].

Fraudulent trading is both a civil and criminal offence. The recent judgment of the High Court in Bouchier v Booth provided a helpful reminder of the principles that a Court will apply when considering whether directors have acted in a manner that constitutes fraudulent trading and the high threshold for proving fraudulent conduct.

The Court of Appeal has ruled that the previous decision of the High Court to sanction a restructuring plan ("Plan") that had been proposed by the Adler Group ("Adler") should be set aside. The decision marks the first appeal in relation to a restructuring plan under Part 26A of the Companies Act 2006 ("Companies Act") and the decision offers clarity on the approach to restructuring plans, particularly when considering issues of "fairness".

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 Supreme Court has provided welcome clarity for insolvency practitioners in confirming that administrators of a company appointed pursuant to the Insolvency Act 1986 ("IA 1986") will not be criminally liable for a failure by the company to comply with redundancy notification requirements.

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

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:

Since the introduction of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (CIGA) and the creation of the new Part 26A restructuring plan procedure, questions have been raised about whether the cost of using such a procedure would restrict its use to larger, better capitalised companies.

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.