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Singapore’s Ministry of Law has unveiled significant proposed changes aimed at revising Singapore’s restructuring and insolvency laws and developing Singapore into a regional debt restructuring hub.1

IN BRIEF

Draft legislation unveiled

In Brief

For the first time, a court has adopted the ‘centre of main interest’ (COMI) as grounds at common law to recognise foreign insolvency proceedings.

The decision earlier this year by the High Court of Singapore (the Court) recognised a Japanese bankruptcy trustee appointed to companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI):

One of the goals of the Bankruptcy Code is to provide a debtor with a fresh start. The discharge of prepetition debts at the conclusion of a bankruptcy case is one of the most important ways to attain this fresh start.  On May 16, 2016, the Supreme Court made it harder for debtors to obtain a fresh start by broadening an exception to discharge.

On 29 April 2016, the Australian Federal Government (Government) announced three major insolvency law reform proposals in its Improving Bankruptcy and Insolvency Laws Proposal Paper1 (Proposal). The Government has invited submissions from stakeholders and given this is a rare opportunity to undertake substantial reform, we strongly encourage involvement. 

Since May, we’ve followed Solus v. Perry, a New York County Supreme Court case originally filed in July of 2012. The case centered around whether Perry entered into a binding oral agreement to sell Solus a participation interest in a $1.6 billion claim against Bernie Madoff’s bankruptcy estate.

Personal data is a valuable corporate asset.  At times, the personal information collected from customers (such as email address, mailing address, phone number, etc.) can be a company’s most valuable asset.  Unfortunately, when a company attempts to sell this asset, it can find the value of the data significantly diminished due to promises made in a privacy policy the company implemented years before it ever contemplated such a sale.

The bankruptcy case of TOUSA, Inc. and its various subsidiaries (collectively “Tousa”) is one where lenders have seen their fortunes rise and fall. On March 15, 2012, they fell again when the Eleventh Circuit1 (the “Circuit Court”) reversed the District Court’s opinion and reinstated the Bankruptcy Court’s order, which had disgorged over $400 million from Tousa’s senior lenders and avoided certain guarantees and liens granted to them by the Conveying Subsidiaries (defined below).