The English Court of Appeal has recently decided that a corporation that held shares in a company remained a shareholder notwithstanding the shareholding company's dissolution.

BWE Estates Limited had two shareholders: an individual named David who held 75% of its shares and a company, Belvedere Limited, which held the remaining 25%. Although Belvedere was dissolved in 1996, it remained listed as a shareholder in BWE's share register.

In the English High Court, the joint administrators of four English companies within the former Lehman Brothers group sought directions from the Court in respect of a proposed settlement. The settlement would put to rest substantial inter-company claims including those at issue in the 'Waterfall III' proceedings.

In a second application heard on the same day, Hildyard J considered an application by the administrators of Lehman Brothers Europe Limited (LBEL) for directions that would enable a surplus to be distributed to the sole member of LBEL while LBEL remained in administration. The proposed scheme had material benefits for both shareholders and creditors. The administrators acknowledged that the orders sought were an indirect means of circumventing the Insolvency Act 1986 (UK), which does not expressly provide for directors to make distributions during an administration.

The Court of Appeal has recently dismissed an appeal from the High Court's judgment (discussed in our September 2016 update) setting aside a compromise under Part 14 of the Companies Act 1993 after finding that the challenging creditors, who had voted against the compromise, had been unfairly prejudiced by the decision to call only one meeting of creditors.

In Day v The Official Assignee as Liquidator of GN Networks Ltd (in Liq) [2016] NZHC 2400, the High Court rejected a claim that the funding arrangement at issue constituted maintenance or champerty.

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: