Introduction

Today, the UK Supreme Court considered for the first time the existence, content and engagement of the so-called “creditor duty”: the alleged duty of a company’s directors to consider, or to act in accordance with, the interests of the company’s creditors when the company becomes insolvent, or when it approaches, or is at real risk of, insolvency.

In brief

In brief

In brief

The High Court in London gave judgment on Friday, 3 July 2020 on the relative ranking of over $10 billion of subordinated liabilities in the administrations of two entities in the Lehman Brothers group.

Liquidators, administrators and receivers in Queensland are on notice that they may face serious personal consequences if they fail to cause companies to which they are appointed to comply with Environmental Protection Orders (EPOs).

Re Linc Energy Limited (In Liquidation) [2017] QSC 53 (13 April 2017) has determined that liquidators may not be able to escape obligations under an EPO by issuing a disclaimer notice.

The recent decisions in Re MF Global UK Ltd and Re Omni Trustees Ltd give conflicting views as to whether section 236 of the Insolvency Act 1986 has extra-territorial effect. In this article, we look at the reasoning in the two judgments and discuss a possible further argument for extra-territorial effect.

The conflicting rulings on section 236