The Privy Council has recently delivered a landmark judgment on the interplay between arbitration agreements and winding up petitions. The Board held that the English case of Salford Estates (No 2) Ltd v Altomart Ltd [2014] EWCA Civ 1575; Ch 589, which had adopted a pro-arbitration approach to stay or dismiss winding up petitions based on debts covered by arbitration agreements, even if the debts were not genuinely disputed on substantial grounds was wrongly decided.

Digital assets may be new, but existing English insolvency laws and principles can deal with them. So finds the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT) in its ‘Legal Statement on Digital Assets and English Insolvency Law’, published this week.

Key takeaways include:

The UK Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in Stanford International Bank Ltd (In Liquidation) (Appellant)v HSBC Bank PLC (Respondent) [2022] UKSC 34, striking out a significant claim (£116m) for breach of the Quincecare duty on the grounds that the claimant had suffered no loss.

Insolvency related claims in relation to contracts subject to arbitration agreements continue to result in interesting challenges for the English court. In a recent decision the court had to decide whether an application for a summary judgment amounted to a step in the proceedings such that the applicant had waived its right to seek a stay in favour of arbitration.

Background

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.

The English Court has, for the first time, handed down judgment on whether the liquidation stay prevents the Financial Conduct Authority (the "FCA") from issuing a Warning Notice under sections 92 and 126 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 ("FSMA") without first seeking leave from the Court.

The English courts are known for being pro-arbitration. In the recent case of Riverrock Securities Limited v International Bank of St Petersburg (Joint Stock Company) [2020] EWHC 2483 (Comm) the English High Court has granted an anti-suit injunction in relation to claims being made in foreign bankruptcy proceedings, where the underlying agreements included arbitration provisions with a London seat.

The parties

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

InTelnic Ltd v Knipp Medien und Kommunikation GmbH [2020] EWHC 2075 (Ch), Sir Geoffrey Vos sitting in the English High Court ruled that where a debt is governed by an arbitration agreement, it is appropriate for the Court to stay or dismiss a winding up petition without investigating whether the debt is disputed in good faith and on substantial grounds.

This case provides guidance on the high threshold a creditor will have to cross in order to be able to present a winding up petition for sums due under an agreement with an arbitration clause.

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).