The Sino-Ocean restructuring plan is the first to be sanctioned in 2025 – but it starts the year off with a very interesting bang. In a relatively short (and commendably clear) judgment, the Court addresses head on:

At the end of February 2023, the High Court sanctioned seven restructuring plans for companies in the Lifeways group. Lifeways is a group providing supported living and specialist residential, support and care services at properties throughout the UK.

The case raised several interesting aspects, particularly in relation to the conduct of creditor meetings for a restructuring plan where cross class cram down is sought, and whether there is a read across from scheme case law on this issue.

Japan Inc has embarked upon the overdue process of unbundling its conglomerate structures. Businesses that are being put up for sale include distressed oversees operations, particularly in the automotive sector. Managing the businesses while they are in distress, preparing them for sale, and eventually selling them, comes with a variety of legal and practical complications. The legal landscape will vary by jurisdiction, but the following aspects generally need to be considered in some shape or form regardless of the applicable law.

On 18 March 2021, the UK Government published its white paper on restoring trust in audit and corporate governance. On 31 May 2022, the Government published its response to the consultation.

The Bankruptcy Code confers upon debtors or trustees, as the case may be, the power to avoid certain preferential or fraudulent transfers made to creditors within prescribed guidelines and limitations. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Mexico recently addressed the contours of these powers through a recent decision inU.S. Glove v. Jacobs, Adv. No. 21-1009, (Bankr. D.N.M.

On 18 March 2021, the UK Government published its long-awaited white paper on restoring trust in audit and corporate governance.

This follows a series of high-profile audit errors and major corporate collapses, including those of BHS in 2016 and Carillion in 2018, which led the Government to commission three independent reviews into different aspects of the UK’s audit, reporting and corporate governance systems.

The white paper targets large listed and AIM-listed companies, and large private companies where there is a public interest, and primarily focuses on:

In In re Smith, (B.A.P. 10th Cir., Aug. 18, 2020), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit recently joined the majority of circuit courts of appeals in finding that a creditor seeking a judgment of nondischargeability must demonstrate that the injury caused by the prepetition debtor was both willful and malicious under Section 523(a)(6) of the Bankruptcy Code.

Factual Background

In a recent decision, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York held that claim disallowance issues under Section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code "travel with" the claim, and not with the claimant. Declining to follow a published district court decision from the same federal district, the bankruptcy court found that section 502(d) applies to disallow a transferred claim regardless of whether the transferee acquired its claim through an assignment or an outright sale. See In re Firestar Diamond, 615 B.R. 161 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. 2020).

InIn re Juarez, 603 B.R. 610 (9th Cir. BAP 2019), the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addressed a question of first impression in the circuit with respect to property that is exempt from creditor reach: it adopted the view that, under the "new value exception" to the "absolute priority rule," an individual Chapter 11 debtor intending to retain such property need not make a "new value" contribution covering the value of the exemption.

Background

In In re Palladino, 942 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2019), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit addressed whether a debtor receives “reasonably equivalent value” in exchange for paying his adult child’s college tuition. The Palladino court answered this question in the negative, thereby contributing to the growing circuit split regarding the avoidability of debtors’ college tuition payments for their adult children as constructively fraudulent transfers.

Background