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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that commodity prices are in the doldrums and that the outlook in the near term is not particularly positive. How should Boards prepare? Combine that with current inflation, interest rate and other cost of living pressures that continue to dominate public discourse and you can understand why many Boards and executives in the resources sector are having some sleepless nights. FY24 is also on track to have more insolvencies than FY23. By December FY24 insolvency activity was up 33.79% on the same time in FY23.

Over the past several years, unitranche facilities have become increasingly prevalent. This growth has been driven by the ever-growing class of private credit and direct lenders who initially developed the unitranche facility structure, along with traditional bank lenders now joining this market. The unitranche structure has several advantages, including typically quicker execution for the parties involved and in some cases a lower cost of capital to the borrower.

The High Court of Australia’s decision in Wells Fargo Trust Company, National Association (as Owner Trustee) & Anor v VB Leaseco Pty Ltd (Administrators Appointed) & Ors (the “Willis” case).

On Wednesday, 16 March 2022, the High Court of Australia handed down its decision in the Willis case.

On the 2 August 2021 Treasury released a consultation paper titled ‘Helping Companies Restructure by Improving Schemes of Arrangement. The consultation is aimed at reforming Australia’s scheme of arrangement procedure.

A recent decision of the Federal Court has confirmed that a secured creditor who consents to employee creditors being paid out of the charged asset pool is entitled to be subrogated to the priority rights of those employee creditors.

1.1 Facts

Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ) was the only secured creditor of Akron Roads Pty Ltd (Akron), holding fixed and floating charges over all of Akron’s undertakings and assets. In 2010, liquidators were appointed to Akron.

Following our previous alert here on Justice Middleton’s decision in Wells Fargo Trust Company, National Association (trustee) v VB Leaseco Pty Ltd (Administrators Appointed),[1] the administra

Insolvency relief extended to 31 December 2020

On Sunday, the Federal Government announced that it will extend until the end of the year insolvency relief measures which were put in place from March 2020 as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic which were due to expire on 25 September 2020.[1]

Secured lenders are troubled at the recent news that a New York state court judge denied a preliminary injunction request filed in the Supreme Court of New York by a group of dissenting first-lien lenders, seeking to prevent a borrower, Serta Simmons, and certain first-lien consenting lenders from entering into a recapitalization transaction. In exchange for the purchase of the consenting lenders’ debt at a discount, the consenting lenders received new super-priority debt ranking ahead of the non-consenting lenders’ debt.

As part of its economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, yesterday the Government passed a ‘temporary safe harbour’ insolvency measure[1].