The High Court has found that a borrower's debenture granted to a lender in respect of certain internet protocol (IP) addresses was a floating charge.
It’s not the first occasion that a major serviced office provider has landed in a corporate restructuring but it may be the most high-profile. The current evolving situation follows on from such previous fireworks as the failed IPO, a corporate reorganisation that swapped a US headco “inc.“ for an “LLC” (prompting litigation at the end of the last decade), and continuing market uncertainty as to the robustness of the brand.
There has been no shortage of high-profile insolvencies in the crypto market in recent months across a range of market participants and geographies. These include the US Chapter 11 and Bahamas provisional liquidation of FTX as well as the US Chapter 11 filings of BlockFi, Singapore-based crypto hedge fund ThreeArrows Capital, US-based lenders Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, US-based crypto mining data centre Compute North and German crypto bank Nuri.
A much-anticipated UK decision confirms directors' obligations to creditors, but changes little in practice
The UK Supreme Court handed down its decision in BTI v Sequana on 5 October 2022, unanimously dismissing the appeal from the 2019 Court of Appeal decision and confirming how directors duties ought to be applied when a company is in the zone of insolvency. Although decisions of the UK Supreme Court are not binding upon the jurisdictions in which Ogier practises law, it will nevertheless be highly persuasive and influence the approach taken in the offshore jurisdictions that Ogier advises upon.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtors’ attempt to shield contributions to a 401(k) retirement account from “projected disposable income,” therefore making such amounts inaccessible to the debtors’ creditors.[1] For the reasons explained below, the Sixth Circuit rejected the debtors’ arguments.
Case Background
A statute must be interpreted and enforced as written, regardless, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, “of whether a court likes the results of that application in a particular case.” That legal maxim guided the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in a recent decision[1] in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtor’s repeated filings and requests for dismissal of his bankruptcy cases in order to avoid foreclosure of his home.
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Jurisdictions across the globe have sought to expand their restructuring toolkits – spurred on by Governments seeking to support business during the pandemic. This has had a significant impact on the options available when restructuring business in Asia Pacific.
