In a groundbreaking ruling, the Court of Appeal for British Columbia recently delivered a decision that is poised to significantly influence insolvency proceedings. The case, cited as British Columbia v. Peakhill Capital Inc., 2024 BCCA 246, marks the first time an appellate court has addressed the jurisdiction and appropriateness of reverse vesting orders (RVOs) in receivership contexts. This ruling provides crucial insights into the court's reasoning and its implications for legal and non-legal professionals alike.

Background and core issue

Several industry associations (ISDA, BBA and FOA – the futures and options association) have responded to a Treasury informal consultation on the need to carve out from English insolvency law the porting of clearing clients’ positions and margin. They agree on the need to ensure certainty around the porting option when a clearing member becomes insolvent. EMIR’s porting option should also apply where the clearing member is acting through back-to-back transactions and holds the client’s margin. The associations note that porting should be subject to agreement.

FSA has launched a consultation and discussion paper on proposals to bring the Client Assets Sourcebook (CASS) in line with EMIR. More generally, it wants to make CASS client money pooling provisions more flexible and address the problems identified during the Lehman and MF Global insolvencies.

The proposals cover the following:

Jameson House Properties Ltd. and Jameson House Ventures Ltd. (the Jameson Companies) were incorporated to develop a 37-storey mixed-use building in downtown Vancouver called Jameson House. By 2008, after many years of planning and development, the Jameson House project was well underway.