Restructuring Plans (RPs)

2024 was a year of firsts for RPs, and as case law in this area continues to evolve, there is little doubt that this will carry through into 2025.

It would be remiss not to expect to see more RPs in 2025. News of Thames Water's restructuring is "splashed" all over the press and Speciality Steel's plan might see the first "cram up" of creditors, but there seems a long way to go to get creditors onside.

The below sets out key considerations when dealing with an extension of an administration at the end of the first-year anniversary.

Categorisation of a charge as fixed or floating will have a significant impact on how assets are dealt with on insolvency and creditor outcomes.

Typical fixed charge assets include land, property, shares, plant and machinery, intellectual property such as copyrights, patents and trademarks and goodwill.

Typical floating charge assets include stock and inventory, trade debtors, cash and currency, movable plant and machinery (such as vehicles), and raw materials and other consumable items used by the business.

In March 2015 the major high street retailer British Home Stores (BHS) was acquired for £1 by Retail Acquisitions Limited (RAL), a company owned by Mr Dominic Chappell. Mr Chappell became a director of the BHS entities upon completion of the purchase, together with three other individuals.

Following our previous alert, in which we highlighted an issue with entries relating to registered security maintained at Companies House being incorrectly updated to indicate that they had in fact been discharged without the aware

Over the past week, reports have emerged about filings that have been made at Companies House marking a charge as satisfied, without the company's or relevant lender's knowledge.

There were rumours last week, which were simply that, because Companies House had not publicly announced any issue, but, as we have seen over the weekend and is now widely reported in the news, it appears that there have been at least 800 erroneous filings.

We wrote earlier this year about the rise in insolvencies in the UK at the end of the summer, as persistent inflation, the pain of increasing interest rates, higher energy bills and the end of pandemic measures all took their toll.

Monitoring Winding up Petitions

While not an everyday occurrence, a company being issued with a winding up petition is an eventuality that all providers of finance, whether on a secured or unsecured basis, will prepare for.

From a contractual perspective, facility agreements will include specific monitoring information covenants as part of the core relationship housekeeping, supported by a hard backstop of event of default triggers, with rights for debt acceleration, and (if applicable) security enforcement operating in tandem from that point.

After a sharp rise in May, it came as little surprise to see corporate insolvency figures continue their march upwards. A total of 2,163 registered companies entered an insolvency proceeding in June 2023: the second highest figure since January 2019 and 40% higher than the equivalent for June 2022.

ne in three of us own crypto currencies, crypto ownership is estimated to have doubled in the UK last year – and two of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges face lawsuits from the securities regulator, the SEC, in the US. Three statistics from the FT this week that put warnings from the UK’s financial regulator – that crypto is largely unregulated and high risk, and investors should be prepared to lose all their money – into context. The FCA noted that it is up to consumers to decide whether to buy crypto, but that many regret making a hasty decision.