Introduction 

On 12 November 2020, the Official Receiver's Office ("ORO") issued Circular No. 2 / 2020 setting out the revised arrangement on submission of Form D1 and Form D2 by provisional liquidators or liquidators to the Official Receiver ("Circular"). Provisional liquidators / liquidators ("Liquidators") are required to submit a statutory Form D1 to the ORO when they become aware of any unfit conduct of a director. The Circular takes effect from 1 December 2020.

Hong Kong's insolvency system is famous for its lack of statutory corporate rescue procedure ("CRP"). Owing to the lack of CRP, financially distressed companies may only recourse to rescue their business with (i) a non-statutory consensual agreement with major creditors to restructure debts, or (ii) a scheme of arrangement under the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622). These options, however, have many problems such as being expensive, impracticable, inflexible and tedious.

Introduction

Both the German federal government and various German federal states are pushing ahead with packages of measures to mitigate the as-yet-unforeseeable economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overview

In order to mitigate the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislator passed the COVID-19 Insolvency Suspension Act (COVInsAG; the “Act”), which came into force on 27 March with retroactive effect from 1 March 2020.