Long-awaited law reform to bring Australia's insolvency regime into step with many of its trading counterparts is slated to be enacted in the second half of 2017. The text of the law is currently before parliament for debate. If passed, Australia will see:

The Australian government has released draft legislation which proposes significant legislative change to insolvency laws in Australia. One of the changes proposed, is that directors will not be liable for insolvent trading in certain circumstances where the company is undertaking a restructure.

Under the proposed safe harbour reform, directors will not be liable for debts incurred whilst the company is insolvent if they can show that:

The increase in the availability of alternate capital in Australia over the past decade has provided a landscape for well-tested global restructuring techniques to be applied locally. This includes 'loan to own' strategies.

Moody's announced in October 2014 that the detainment of Agile Property Holdings' chairman, Chen Zhoulin by government authorities was credit negative, in Moody's view, "similar incidents would adversely affect developers' borrowing costs and/or their access to offshore funding". The events that have unfolded since show that Moody's were right on the money.

Introduction

Gaining access to development land in the PRC has often been linked to government connections and dubious business practices. However, a number of investigations into the allegedly corrupt activities of high-level real estate executives in China have recently taken place.

With APCOA Parking, the English High Court sets out the latest line of authority in the increasing use of schemes of arrangement by foreign companies.

This case, APCOA Parking (UK) Limited & Ors [2014] EWHC 997 (Ch), presents two novel aspects: