The Insolvency Service has released the latest insolvency statistics (to September 2020). 

These figures are particularly interesting as they shed light on the effects of the various changes to the insolvency landscape that have occurred since Covid-19 started to affect the economy.

Since March 2020, we have seen the introduction of the Corporate Insolvency & Governance Act ("CIGA"), Government schemes and lockdowns of various sizes, shapes and geographical restrictions. 

The statutory provisions for Restructuring Plans form a new Part 26A of the Companies Act 2006. CIGA was brought into force on June 26, 2020 and at a hearing in the High Court in London on September 2, 2020, the plan proposed by Virgin Atlantic, which was the first to be brought before the courts, was sanctioned.

The scope of discovery available in a bankruptcy case concerning a debtor's conduct, property, financial condition, and related matters is so broad that it has sometimes been likened to a permissible "fishing expedition." However, a ruling recently handed down by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York demonstrates that there are limits to the information that can be discovered in bankruptcy. In In re Cambridge Analytica LLC, 600 B.R. 750 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y.

In the service of the Bankruptcy Code’s goals of giving debtors a "fresh start" and ensuring that estate assets are fairly and equally distributed among similarly situated creditors, the Bankruptcy Code contains an array of advantageous provisions that either do not exist under non-bankruptcy law or are more difficult to deploy. These include, among other things, the ability to reject burdensome contracts, to avoid preferential or fraudulent transfers, and to limit the amount of certain types of creditor claims.

Courts disagree as to whether the amount that a bankruptcy trustee or chapter 11 debtor-in-possession ("DIP" ) can recover in fraudulent transfer avoidance litigation should be capped at the total amount of unsecured claims against the estate. A Delaware bankruptcy court recently weighed in on this issue in PAH Litigation Trust v. Water Street Healthcare Partners, L.P. (In re Physiotherapy Holdings, Inc.), 2017 WL 5054308 (Bankr. D. Del. Nov. 1, 2017). Noting the absence of any guidance on the question from the U.S.

In Beem v. Ferguson (In re Ferguson), 2017 BL 101650 (11th Cir. Mar. 30, 2017), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit addressed the distinction between constitutional mootness (a jurisdictional issue that precludes court review of an appeal) and equitable mootness (which allows a court to exercise its discretion to refuse to hear an appeal under certain circumstances). The Eleventh Circuit ruled that an appeal from an order confirming a chapter 11 plan was not constitutionally moot because an "actual case or controversy" existed.

In the November/December 2014 edition of the Business Restructuring Review, we discussed a decision handed down by the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware addressing the meaning of “unreasonably small capital” in the context of constructively fraudulent transfer avoidance litigation. In Whyte ex rel. SemGroup Litig. Trust v.

"In Wellness Int’l Network, Ltd. v. Sharif, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 1932 (2015), a divided U.S. Supreme Court resolved the circuit split regarding whether a bankruptcy court may, with the consent of the litigants, adjudicate a claim that, though statutorily denominated as “core,” is not otherwise constitutionally determinable by a bankruptcy judge. The majority held that so long as consent—whether express or implied—is “knowing and voluntary,” Article III of the U.S. Constitution is not violated by a bankruptcy court’s adjudication of such a claim.

In Hosking v. TPG Capital Management LP (In re Hellas Telecommunications (Luxemburg) II SCA), 2015 BL 21823 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Jan. 29, 2015), the U.S. bankruptcy court presiding over the chapter 15 case of London-based Hellas Telecommunications (Luxemburg) II SCA ("Hellas II"), which formerly owned one of the largest mobile phone operators in Greece, dismissed fraudulent transfer claims asserted by Hellas II's U.K. liquidators against private equity giants TPG Capital Management LP and Apax Partners LLP as well as various affiliates (collectively, the "defendants").

The meaning of "unreasonably small capital" in the context of constructively fraudulent transfer avoidance litigation is not spelled out in the Bankruptcy Code. As a result, bankruptcy courts have been called upon to fashion their own definitions of the term. Nonetheless, the courts that have considered the issue have mostly settled on some general concepts in fashioning such a definition. In Whyte ex rel. SemGroup Litig. Trust v. Ritchie SG Holdings, LLC (In re SemCrude, LP), 2014 BL 272343 (D. Del. Sept.