Creditors seeking to enforce an undisputed debt against a solvent foreign non-Hong Kong company in the courts of Hong Kong will welcome the recent judgment of the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) in Shandong Chenming Paper Holdings Limited v Arjowiggins HKK 2 Limited [2022] HKCFA 11, as the CFA helpfully backs a broader and more commercially holistic interpretation of a key tenet relating to how Hong Kong courts approach certain threshold assessments involving winding up petitions brought by creditors in Hong Kong against foreign incorporated companies.

In a highly anticipated decision issued last Thursday (on December 19, 2019), the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held in In re Millennium Lab Holdings II, LLC that a bankruptcy court may constitutionally confirm a chapter 11 plan of reorganization that contains nonconsensual third-party releases. The court considered whether, pursuant to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Stern v. Marshall, 564 U.S. 462 (2011), Article III of the United States Constitution prohibits a bankruptcy court from granting such releases.