Introduction

Towards the end of 2020, while businesses were reeling from the challenges of grappling with a global pandemic, the end of the Brexit transition period and LIBOR transition, the Law Commission published a paper analysing the current law underlying intermediated securities - Intermediated securities: who owns your shares? A Scoping Paper.

Under English law, there is no common law right to terminate a contract on a counterparty’s insolvency. As a result, in all well-drafted commercial contracts it common to see a contractual right to terminate on the event of a party’s insolvency.