On May 20, 2020, the UK Government published its much anticipated draft legislation (the Corporate Governance and Insolvency Bill) which aims to provide greater opportunities for company survival and better returns for creditors during and after the COVID-19 emergency. The Government intends to ask Parliament to expedite progress of the Bill.

On 18 May 2020, the same date that Romania switched to a state of alert that will expire on 17 June 2020, Law no. 55/2020 entered into force, which contains amendments to legal provisions for regular insolvency during the state of alert.

The most important amendments include a deferral of the obligation to file for insolvency, an increase in the threshold for petitioning for insolvency, extension of the duration for the reorganisation plan and an extension of other procedural deadlines.

The following is a list of the major amendments contained in the law:

A court¹ has approached the interplay between the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Government's furlough scheme so as to encourage and support the rescue culture and facilitate access to the scheme by administrators. It ruled that:

On March 28, 2020^[1], the UK Government announced that it will introduce new legislation extending the UK’s existing restructuring and insolvency laws to include:

The High Court gave its ruling yesterday in the case of Discover (Northampton) Limited and others v Debenhams Retail Limited and others [2019] EWHC 2441 (Ch), rejecting four of the five grounds on which the Applicants disputed the validity of the company's Creditors Voluntary Arrangement ("CVA"), which was approved by creditors in May 2019.

Introduction The UK Government has announced that it will be introducing legislation under which the UK tax authorities1 will move up the creditor hierarchy in English insolvency proceedings2 in respect of certain taxes paid by

Introduction

In the recent case of Global Corporate Ltd v Hale , the Court of Appeal was asked to assess whether sums, described as “interim dividends”, paid to Mr. Hale (the “Respondent”) in his capacity as both a director and shareholder of Powerstation UK Limited (the “Company”), had been made in accordance with section 830 of the Companies Act 2006 (the “Act”) prior to the Company’s insolvency.

A draft government ordinance amending the Romanian insolvency law was published on September 12. The bill is intended to increase recoverability of state receivables from insolvent companies and to reduce the debtor’s control over the proceedings.

One of the main changes relates to denying the existing right of the insolvent debtor to nominate an insolvency practitioner to be appointed as official receiver. Under the current procedure, it was mandatory for the insolvency court to follow debtor’s proposal, if the creditors did not make a proposal of their own.

The High Court has formally adopted new guidelines approved by the fledgling Judicial Insolvency Network (“JIN”) designed to encourage and enhance communication between courts where parallel insolvency proceedings have been commenced in different jurisdictions (the “Guidelines”).

On January 25, 2016, the Romanian court handling the bankruptcy proceeding of Astra SA extended the deadline to file court claims against Astra SA to 17 February 2016. The initial deadline for filing was 18 January 2016. Creditors of Astra SA may wish to avail themselves of this extended deadline to file such claims in order to recover some or part of the amounts owed to them by Astra SA in the bankruptcy/liquidation proceedings.