The New South Wales Court of Appeal recently handed down an important judgment on the remuneration of registered liquidators.

Sakr concerned an appeal by Sanderson as liquidator of Sakr against an order determining his remuneration on anad valorem basis, without reference to his time attendances or hourly rate.  Due to the importance of the issues, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association (ARITA) appeared and made submissions on the issue.

In Power Rental Op Co Australia, LLC v Forge Group Power Pty Ltd (in liq) (receivers and managers appointed) the New South Wales Court of Appeal recently considered the 'fixtures' exclusion in Australia's Personal Property Securities Act (PPSA).

Power Rental agreed to lease turbines to Forge Group for two years.  Shortly after the lease began, Forge Group entered voluntary administration.

In this Australian case, a major creditor of the company in question alleged that it was involved in phoenix activity and offered to fund a public examination of the director provided that the creditor's solicitors would act for the liquidators in that examination.  The liquidators refused the offer and, in response, the creditor applied to have the liquidators removed.

In Fielding v The Burnden Group Limited (BGL) the English High Court dismissed an application for the liquidator to be held personally liable for the costs of a successful appeal against the rejection of a proof of debt.

In the UK case of CFL Finance Limited v Rubin and Ors, a creditor had sought to make an individual bankrupt. A creditors' meeting was held.  At the meeting, a proposal for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement was approved by the creditor that held the largest portion of debt (and therefore 90.43% of the vote).  The other two creditors voted against the proposal.

In this English case, a secured lender (Nationwide) appointed administrators to three companies. However, before appointing, Nationwide had:

On 30 October 2014, the English High Court sanctioned the second scheme of arrangement for the APCOA group (the “Scheme”). APCOA has been one of the hottest names in the restructuring market in 2014. First, it broke new ground in relation to an “amend and extend” scheme in early 2014 when it established sufficient connection to England off the back of a change in governing law. Second, the Scheme was aggressively opposed and its sanction by the High Court was appealed to the Court of Appeal (although ultimately the appeal was withdrawn).

One of the recent hot topics in the European restructuring market has been whether the UK Courts would sanction a scheme of arrangement in relation to a foreign company, with no previous connection to the UK whatsoever, where the sole basis for establishing jurisdiction to undertake the scheme would be amending the governing law and jurisdiction clauses of the company’s principal finance documents to English law.