This note aims to provide brief and practical answers to common questions on the law of assignment in English law finance transactions.
1. Are all notified assignments legal assignments?
What are the principal types of insolvency proceedings?
Background
Receivables financiers, lenders taking security assignments over contractual rights, participants in the secondary loan market and others have an interest in:
Introduction
The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench decision in Redwater Energy Corporation Re, 2016 ABQB 278, written by Chief Justice Neil Wittmann, clarifies that the provisions of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (BIA) addressing the environmental liability of trustees render certain provisions of provincial regulatory legislation addressing wells and pipelines inoperative to the extent they conflict with the BIA.
This article first appeared in the December 2014 edition of Corporate Rescue & Insolvency journal. Written by Deepak Reddy in Dentons' New York office, Carlo Vairo in Dentons’ Toronto office and Alexander Hewitt in Dentons' London office.
Key Points
Financial guarantees often contain non-competition clauses. This is mainly to:
- increase the financier’s recoveries from its principal debtor, by stopping the guarantor from draining money from the principal debtor; and
- prevent the guarantor from obstructing a restructuring of the principal debtor’s liabilities.
A recent case suggests these clauses should expressly exclude the “rule in Cherry v. Boultbee”. Zoë Thirlwell and Alexander Hewitt explain.
Counter-indemnity rights
In Rieger Printing Ink Co, 2009 WL 477541 (Ont S.C.J. [Commercial]), the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dealt with a party's right to protection against selfincrimination in relation to an examination held under section 163 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, R.S.C., 1985 c. B-3 ("BIA").
In Bank of Montreal v River Rentals Group Ltd [2010] ABCA 16, the Alberta Court of Appeal had to consider the acceptance of a higher bid made after the tender closing date.
In a recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Re Smurfit-Stone Container Canada Inc., Justice Pepall examined the conflicting interests that arise where companies within a group of restructuring companies have made intercompany loans to one another, and where the board of directors mirror each other in each subsidiary.