The High Court sanctioned Madagascar Oil Limited’s restructuring plan, exercising cross class cram down. The judgment deals with a few now familiar points: what is the relevant alternative? Can it be a different deal? As well as touching on a few novel ones in an unusual two class only plan: was there in fact an in the money class enabling cross class cram down? Almost a third of the judgment is devoted to international recognition and effectiveness of the plan in Madagascar and Mauritius, an unusually detailed analysis, but required here given the specific facts of the case.
On 28 March 2020, the Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, announced new insolvency measures to support companies under pressure as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. In summary, the government is due to: (i) implement the landmark changes to the corporate insolvency regime that were announced in August 2018 (as discussed in Weil’s European Restructuring Watch update on 7 September 2018); and (ii) temporarily and retrospectively suspend wrongful trading provisions for three months.
Proposed Changes to the Corporate Insolvency Regime
Background
On 6 March 2020, the restructuring of Doncasters Group's 1.22 billion funded debt was completed. Following a successful non-core disposals program, the Doncasters Group (a leading worldwide supplier of high quality engineered components for the aerospace, industrial gas turbine and specialist automotive industries) operates from 12 principal manufacturing facilities based across the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Mexico and China.
Over the last two years, BEIS has issued a number of consultations either focussed on, or touching upon, corporate governance issues in insolvency or the broader insolvency framework.
Editor’s Note: One of the many fascinating things about restructuring work is its willingness to evolve by borrowing from other areas of the law. Just as business practices change, new financing techniques evolve, and transactions become more complex, the bankruptcy world must adapt as well, to allow for a well functioning insolvency system and not a stilted, out of date process. To that end, we at The Bankruptcy Cave love finding curious decisions in tangential fields of the law, and thinking about how they may change bankruptcy practice, or how bankruptcy pract