A series of high-profile insolvencies in 2020 caused by the coronavirus pandemic, oil price crash and allegations of fraudulent activity has brought to the forefront the question of a seller's rights over goods when they are in transit to an insolvent buyer. While the seller might have a claim in damages or for the price, such claims will be unsecured and therefore of little to no value against an insolvent buyer.

This note considers how the recent changes to UK insolvency law introduced by the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 ("CIGA") might affect those involved in the sale and purchase of commodities. In particular, it looks at the impact of Section 14 of CIGA on contracts for the supply of goods or services, and on the typical rights and remedies of the seller / supplier under such contracts.

In the previous four articles in this series (see here) we looked at the key role of professional investors at startups, though also at the setbacks of the exclusive dependence of these types of companies on equity and the advantages debt would have for them. The environment, as we saw, is also a favorable one for borrowing. We described the difficulty to provide general recipes for getting debt and a few not very promising routes.

En los cuatro artículos anteriores de esta serie (ver aquí) analizamos el papel clave de los inversores profesionales en las 'startups', pero también las desventajas de la exclusiva dependencia de este tipo de empresas del 'equity' y las ventajas que tendría la deuda para ellas. El entorno, como vimos, es además favorable para el endeudamiento. Abordamos la dificultad de ofrecer recetas generales para conseguir deuda y algunas vías no muy prometedoras.