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2023 marked the highest annual number of corporate insolvencies since 1993, according to figures released by The Insolvency Service this week. While creditors’ voluntary liquidations remained by far the most commonly used process, 2023 saw increases across all processes tracked by the Insolvency Service.

The court-fashioned doctrine of "equitable mootness" has frequently been applied to bar appeals of bankruptcy court orders under circumstances where reversal or modification of an order could jeopardize, for example, the implementation of a negotiated chapter 11 plan or related agreements and upset the expectations of third parties who have relied on the order.

The UK’s latest quarterly insolvency statistics have been published and, as predicted, continue to show a high rate of insolvencies, both in relation to pre-pandemic numbers and by comparison to last year’s Q1 results. The Q1 2023 statistics show a 18% increase in the overall number of registered company insolvencies from Q1 2022 and a 4% decrease from Q4 2022, with a total of 5,747 company insolvencies (seasonally adjusted) during this past quarter.

The UK's latest quarterly company insolvency statistics, published on 2 August, confirm the trends the restructuring community are seeing so far this year and are expecting to continue as we progress through the year.

To promote the finality and binding effect of confirmed chapter 11 plans, the Bankruptcy Code categorically prohibits any modification of a confirmed plan after it has been "substantially consummated." Stakeholders, however, sometimes attempt to skirt this prohibition by characterizing proposed changes to a substantially consummated chapter 11 plan as some other form of relief, such as modification of the confirmation order or a plan document, or reconsideration of the allowed amount of a claim. The U.S.

The High Court has sanctioned the Part 26A restructuring plan of E D & F Man Holdings Limited (the Plan) on which Freshfields has advised the E D & F Man Group (the Group). The Plan represents the first full-scale financial restructuring to utilise cross-class cram-down in respect of a financial creditor class and to amend articles of association. This scenario represents the paradigm use case practitioners and commentators envisaged when Part 26A was introduced in 2020.

One year ago, we wrote that, unlike in 2019, when the large business bankruptcy landscape was generally shaped by economic, market, and leverage factors, the COVID-19 pandemic dominated the narrative in 2020. The pandemic may not have been responsible for every reversal of corporate fortune in 2020, but it weighed heavily on the scale, particularly for companies in the energy, retail, restaurant, entertainment, health care, travel, and hospitality industries.

In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit made headlines when it ruled that creditors' state law fraudulent transfer claims arising from the 2007 leveraged buyout ("LBO") of Tribune Co. ("Tribune") were preempted by the safe harbor for certain securities, commodity, or forward contract payments set forth in section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code. In that ruling, In re Tribune Co. Fraudulent Conveyance Litig., 946 F.3d 66 (2d Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 209 L. Ed. 2d 568 (U.S. Apr.

In August 2021, Sir Alistair Norris sanctioned the restructuring plan of Amicus Finance PLC (Amicus) (as we wrote about at the time). On 15 November 2021, the judge handed down his reasoning for sanctioning the plan.

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