Yesterday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) published its long-awaited judgment in Heiploeg/FNV. The ECJ rules that a pre-pack under circumstances can fall within the exception as mentioned in Article 5 (1) Directive 2001/23.

Introduction to the pre-pack

Op 6 december 2021 heeft de Rechtbank Overijssel de burgemeester van de gemeente Hardenberg aangesteld tot mede-curator in het faillissement van De Zorgstal. Dit is een interessante ontwikkeling omdat, voor zover de auteurs bekend, een burgemeester niet eerder is aangesteld tot mede-curator in een zorgfaillissement.

Earlier today, the Dutch House of Representatives (de Tweede Kamer) has voted in favour of the draft bill on “court sanctioning private composition to avoid bankruptcy” (de Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord ter voorkoming van faillissement, the WHOA), together with certain amendments.

This is great news: the WHOA is an effective restructuring tool that is likely to become widely used both in local and cross border restructurings. Especially in light of COVID-19, this is a welcome extra tool for enterprises in distress to avoid bankruptcy.

On 5 September 2017, the Dutch legislator published an amended bill on pre-insolvency proceedings in the Netherlands1 for consultation purposes.2 The Bill contains a proposal for an amendment to the Dutch Bankruptcy Act (Faillissementswet) which enables a company in financial difficulties to propose a composition outside insolvency proceedings to its creditors and shareholders, to restructure problematic debts.

Of general interest is the appeal in the case of Horton v Henry, on which we reported in our January 2015 update. In Horton, the High Court declined to follow a previous ruling, and decided that a bankrupt could not be compelled to access his pension savings to pay off creditors.

Declining to follow a 2012 decision, the High Court has ruled that a bankrupt’s unexercised rights to draw his pension did not represent income to which he was entitled within the meaning of the Insolvency Act 1986, and so did not form part of the bankruptcy estate.

Background

Again, of interest to all schemes providing defined benefits is the recent settlement in the litigation involving the Lehman Brothers Scheme, where the payment of £184 million, representing costs of the buying-out benefits, has been agreed.

Following a detailed investigation by TPR commencing in 2008, and a legal battle through the hierarchy of courts up to the Supreme Court (SC), members of the Lehman Brothers Pension Scheme will receive their full benefits after a settlement was reached on 18 August 2014.

In the case of In the matter of Construction Confederation and In the matter of the Insolvency Act 1986 [2009] EWHC 3551 (Ch), the trustees of the Construction Confederation Staff Pension Scheme have obtained an order for winding up of the sponsoring employer, an unincorporated association.

On 9 November, the PPF published proposals for the 2011/12 pension protection levy year which aim to improve the way the insolvency risk for sponsoring employers is assessed. The proposals reflect industry feedback and a review of methodology and insolvency probabilities carried out by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B).

The key changes include: