Introduction
On 12 November 2020, the Official Receiver's Office ("ORO") issued Circular No. 2 / 2020 setting out the revised arrangement on submission of Form D1 and Form D2 by provisional liquidators or liquidators to the Official Receiver ("Circular"). Provisional liquidators / liquidators ("Liquidators") are required to submit a statutory Form D1 to the ORO when they become aware of any unfit conduct of a director. The Circular takes effect from 1 December 2020.
Hong Kong's insolvency system is famous for its lack of statutory corporate rescue procedure ("CRP"). Owing to the lack of CRP, financially distressed companies may only recourse to rescue their business with (i) a non-statutory consensual agreement with major creditors to restructure debts, or (ii) a scheme of arrangement under the Companies Ordinance (Cap. 622). These options, however, have many problems such as being expensive, impracticable, inflexible and tedious.
Introduction
Section 209(1) of the Companies (Winding Up and Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance (Cap. 32) empowers the Hong Kong court to make an order staying the winding-up proceedings after the winding-up order is made upon the application of, among others, a contributory. However, in the case of Safe Castle Limited v China Silver Asset Management (Hong Kong) Limited [2020] HKCFI 1028, Harris J made it clear that the court will be reluctant to exercise its discretion to stay a winding-up order pending appeal.
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction
Among the many protections afforded creditors under the Bankruptcy Code is the estate’s ability to avoid transfers made before the petition date that benefit certain creditors at the expense of others. These so-called avoidance actions are primarily governed by Sections 544, 547 and 548 of the Bankruptcy Code, which set forth the requirements for challenging prepetition transfers as preferential or fraudulent.
Key Employee Retention Plans (KERPs) and Key Employee Incentive Plans (KEIPs) often are the subject of intense interest, either because a distressed company’s management is focused on developing such programs to retain valuable talent during a time of great uncertainty within its organization or because certain creditor constituencies or parties in interest take issue with the payments a debtor intends to make under the programs.
What happens when the counterparties on both sides of a contract are debtors in separate bankruptcy cases and their estates have contrary views about whether to reject or assume a contract?
As avid blog readers know, we’ve posted extensively on make whole issues, including several articles covering the ongoing make whole litigations in the chapter 11 cases of Energy Future Holdings and its affiliated debtors, which can be found here,