SUMMARY

The UK government recently introduced legislation implementing changes to the special administration regime for regulated water companies (“WISAR”). The changes are designed to modernise the WISAR and to better align it with the special administration regimes for other systemically important sectors like energy supplies and investment banks.

Cancellation of debt a key element of most restructurings generally triggers taxable income. The German tax authorities had issued an administrative decree (the "Tax Restructuring Decree" - Sanierungserlass), however, declaring that, upon the satisfaction of certain requirements and conditioned on forfeiture of any loss carry forwards, the cancellation of debt income ("CODI") would not be taxed.