In brief

On 14 May 2021, the Supreme People's Court of the PRC (SPC) and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)  signed a Record of Meeting setting out a framework to facilitate the mutual recognition of and assistance to insolvency proceedings between Mainland China and Hong Kong ("Arrangement"). The Record of Meeting is supplemented by the SPC's Opinion and the HKSAR Government's Practical Guide, which together provide the "Framework". 

Introduction

Towards the end of 2020, while businesses were reeling from the challenges of grappling with a global pandemic, the end of the Brexit transition period and LIBOR transition, the Law Commission published a paper analysing the current law underlying intermediated securities - Intermediated securities: who owns your shares? A Scoping Paper.

Not for the first time in the current pandemic crisis, the UK government has found itself playing catch up with other countries. Over the weekend the UK followed the lead of governments in Germany and Australia by announcing plans to introduce a temporary relaxation of the existing wrongful trading regime for company directors. It has also taken the opportunity to revive the previous government's plans to add to the existing UK insolvency law "toolkit" by introducing a new debtor-friendly restructuring law.

Wrongful trading