The English Court of Appeal has recently decided that a corporation that held shares in a company remained a shareholder notwithstanding the shareholding company's dissolution.

BWE Estates Limited had two shareholders: an individual named David who held 75% of its shares and a company, Belvedere Limited, which held the remaining 25%. Although Belvedere was dissolved in 1996, it remained listed as a shareholder in BWE's share register.

In the English High Court, the joint administrators of four English companies within the former Lehman Brothers group sought directions from the Court in respect of a proposed settlement. The settlement would put to rest substantial inter-company claims including those at issue in the 'Waterfall III' proceedings.

In a second application heard on the same day, Hildyard J considered an application by the administrators of Lehman Brothers Europe Limited (LBEL) for directions that would enable a surplus to be distributed to the sole member of LBEL while LBEL remained in administration. The proposed scheme had material benefits for both shareholders and creditors. The administrators acknowledged that the orders sought were an indirect means of circumventing the Insolvency Act 1986 (UK), which does not expressly provide for directors to make distributions during an administration.

The Court of Appeal has recently dismissed an appeal from the High Court's judgment (discussed in our September 2016 update) setting aside a compromise under Part 14 of the Companies Act 1993 after finding that the challenging creditors, who had voted against the compromise, had been unfairly prejudiced by the decision to call only one meeting of creditors.

In Day v The Official Assignee as Liquidator of GN Networks Ltd (in Liq) [2016] NZHC 2400, the High Court rejected a claim that the funding arrangement at issue constituted maintenance or champerty.

Greece is proceeding with the largest sovereign debt restructuring in history after its bondholders accepted a significant debt reduction in the face of mounting evidence that a Greek default was inevitable without such relief. In a related market development garnering only slightly less attention than the debt restructuring itself, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, Inc.

The rapid evolution of a robust secondary market for claims against the three largest failed Icelandic banks provides a powerful example of the prompt adaptation of an existing secondary-market legal framework -- originally developed in the US and Europe -- to a complex and novel bankruptcy regime and trading environment.