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:
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:
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.
Recientes resoluciones judiciales han puesto en el foco la problemática aprobación judicial de una liquidación societaria cuando existe una situación de bloqueo por parte de alguno de los socios que impide adoptar acuerdos. Analizamos, a continuación, lo que han dicho los tribunales sobre los acuerdos sociales negativos y su posible impugnabilidad.
(SJM nº 13 de Madrid de 23 de marzo de 2021 y SAP de La Coruña de 1 de abril de 2022)
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
El Consejo de Ministros ha acordado extender el plazo de solicitud de la financiación avaladapor el Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO), CESCE o CERSA (la financiación avalada), así como elevar los umbrales económicos relativos a la refinanciación de la misma, trasladando dichas modificaciones al Código de Buenas Prácticas.
Las medidas que ahora se ven reforzadas o modificadas tienen su origen en el Real Decreto-ley 16/2020, de 28 de abril –del que Garrigues ya se hizo eco en esta publicación–, que fue posteriormente sustituido por la