The Finance Act 2020 received Royal Assent today (22 July), confirming the anticipated but opposed intention to restore HMRC as a secondary preferential creditor on insolvency.
From 1 December 2020 HMRC’s claim will sit ahead of floating charge holders and unsecured creditors reducing the monies available for distribution to both when a corporate files for insolvency.
On May 5, 2020, Judge Mary Walrath of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware delivered a bench ruling that denied a minority shareholder’s motion to dismiss the Chapter 11 cases of Pace Industries and certain of its affiliates on the grounds that the shareholder’s contractual right to block a bankruptcy filing under the debtor’s certificate of incorporation was contrary to public policy.
On 25 June 2020 the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act received Royal Assent, making some of the biggest changes to UK insolvency laws in the last 30 years. We have written several blogs covering the changes and how they help support distressed businesses, impact suppliers, lenders and other third parties and have tracked the changes through the UK parliament.
Secured lenders are troubled at the recent news that a New York state court judge denied a preliminary injunction request filed in the Supreme Court of New York by a group of dissenting first-lien lenders, seeking to prevent a borrower, Serta Simmons, and certain first-lien consenting lenders from entering into a recapitalization transaction. In exchange for the purchase of the consenting lenders’ debt at a discount, the consenting lenders received new super-priority debt ranking ahead of the non-consenting lenders’ debt.
As discussed in earlier posts,1 substantial uncertainty exists over whether companies in bankruptcy are eligible to pursue funding pursuant to the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, which was established by the CARES Act to support small businesses by offering SBA-guaranteed loans on advantageous terms.
As set out in the first blog in this series, the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill (the “Bill”) introduces a new debtor-in-possession moratorium to give companies breathing space in order to try to rescue the company as a going concern.
As set out in the first blog in this series, the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill (the “Bill”) introduces a new debtor-in-possession moratorium to give companies breathing space in order to try to rescue the company as a going concern.
On 20 May 2020, the UK Government introduced the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill (the “Bill”) to the House of Commons. The Bill introduces a new debtor-in-possession moratorium to give companies breathing space in order to try to rescue the company as a going concern. The Bill is currently only in draft form and therefore amendments may be made. It is anticipated that the legislation will come into force by the end of June 2020.
This blog (the first in a series of blogs about this new measure) outlines the key provisions of the moratorium and how it will work.
The UK Government published the Corporate Governance and Insolvency Bill on 20 May 2020. The legislation will be fast tracked and include both temporary and permanent changes to the UK insolvency legislation.
The temporary measures, aimed at supporting businesses struggling with cash flow and facing distress due to COVID-19, include prohibitions on presentation of winding up petitions and winding up orders, suspension of wrongful trading laws and the ability to apply for a moratorium.
As discussed in an earlier Legal Update,1 substantial uncertainty exists over whether companies in bankruptcy are eligible for loans under the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, which was established by the CARES Act to support small businesses by offering SBA-guaranteed loans on advantageous terms. Several recent bankruptcy court decisions underscore this uncertainty.