On 27 February 2024, the High Court sanctioned a restructuring plan (the Plan) proposed by CB&I UK Limited (CB&I), part of the global McDermott construction and engineering group (the Group). This is the first English restructuring plan to be approved after the Court of Appeal judgment in Adler (see our Alert) and follows the guidance in that case.
Background
On 23 January 2024, the Court of Appeal overturned the High Court's sanction of Adler Group's (Adler) restructuring plan (the Plan) (see our alert). This much anticipated judgment provides clarity on the court's discretion to sanction a plan where there are dissenting classes of creditors.
Background
The Plan envisaged:
Introduction
Preventive measures
Out-of-court reorganisation
In-court reorganisation
Modernisation of bankruptcy
The Court of Appeal has recently referred to established case law that the court will only interfere with the act of an officeholder “if he has done something so utterly unreasonable and absurd that no reasonable man would have done it”.
While the judge in the lower court had not made any error of law, on the facts there were identifiable flaws in the judge's reasoning that the trustees' decision not to join in the proceedings was perverse.
The judge had failed to recognise that:
On 19 July 2023, the Luxembourg parliament passed bill no. 6539A on business preservation and modernisation of bankruptcy law, which aims to modernise Luxembourg’s insolvency laws, implementing EU Directive 2019/1023 of the European Parliament and the Council of 20 June 2019 on preventive restructuring frameworks (the 'Business Preservation and Insolvency Modernisation Act' or 'BPIM Act').
After a weekend that saw the tech ecosystem unite to fight for its future, on Monday 13 March 2023, the Bank of England (the Bank) effected the sale of Silicon Valley Bank UK Ltd (SVB UK) to HSBC. It used the resolution powers for stabilising failing banks granted by the Banking Act 2009 which were introduced following the 2008/9 financial crisis.
Resolution powers
The UK insolvency statistics released on 2 August for Q2 2022 (1 April – 30 June 2022) make for fairly sombre, if not entirely unsurprising, reading.
An 81% increase in corporate insolvencies in England and Wales from the same period in 2021 and a 13% increase in insolvencies from Q1 2022. The worst affected sectors are reported to include food, retail and construction.
The UK High Court has excluded 'out of the money' creditors and shareholders from voting on Smile Telecoms Holdings Limited’s (Smile) restructuring plan because they did not have a genuine economic interest in the company.
Background
The Act of 17 December 2021 has extended the transitional measures provided for by the Act of 23 September 2020 until 31 December 2022. In practice, Luxembourg-based companies can hold either virtual board and shareholder meetings, even if their articles of association provide otherwise, or physical meetings if they respect the applicable sanitary conditions.
The Act of 30 June 2021 has extended the possibility for Luxembourg-based companies to hold virtual board and shareholder meetings until 31 December 2021.