On 23 January 2024, the English Court of Appeal set aside the April 2023 order of the High Court sanctioning the English Part 26A restructuring plan (the “Plan”) proposed by AGPS BondCo plc (the “Plan Company”), a subsidiary of Adler Group SA (Adler Group SA and its subsidiaries being the "Adler Group"). The successful appeal was brought by an ad hoc group of holders of the Adler Group's 2029 notes (the "AHG"). The practical consequences of this decision for the Adler Group's restructuring remain to be seen.
The administrators of Avanti Communications Limited (the “Company”) sought directions from the High Court as to whether purported fixed charges in favour of the secured lenders to the satellite operating business should be recharacterised as floating charges (In the matter of Avanti Communications Limited (In administration) [2023] EWHC 940 (Ch)).
Summary of decision
Although the IMF recently announced at Davos that it would upgrade its global economic forecasts, with an improvement predicted in the later part of 2023 and into 2024, times remain difficult for many companies and their lenders – and are likely to remain so for a while yet.
On 28 June 2022 the Insolvency Service published a report it had commissioned from RSM UK to assess the impact that CVAs were having on commercial landlords (the “Report”).
Smile Telecoms, which last year implemented the first restructuring plan for a cross-border African business, has now achieved another first by using section 901C(4) of the Companies Act 2006 to exclude all bar one class from voting on its new restructuring plan.
Section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code creates a framework through which a debtor can elect to either assume or reject an executory contract. Because the Bankruptcy Code does not define “executory,” courts utilize various tests to determine if a debtor can assume a contract—and thus be obligated to perform—or reject a contract—and thus the contract is deemed breached immediately prior to the bankruptcy filing date. The Countryman test is overwhelmingly the most commonly applied test to determine a contract’s executory nature.
On 26 November 2020, the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (Coronavirus) (Suspension of Liability for Wrongful Trading and Extension of the Relevant Period) Regulations 2020 (the “Regulations”) came into force. As well as extending to 31 March 2021 the “relevant period” for certain temporary modifications to the holding of company meetings, the Regulations reintroduce the suspension of the liability for wrongful trading.
The recent English case Arlington Infrastructure Ltd (in administration) and another v Woolrych and others demonstrates the importance of a secured creditor obtaining any consent necessary under the terms of intercreditor arrangements before taking enforcement action.
The facts of the case
The Second Circuit ruled last week in Lehman Bros. Special Fin. Inc. v. Bank of Am. Nat'l Ass'n, No. 18-1079 (2d Cir. 2020) that a Lehman Brothers affiliate cannot claw back $1 billion in payments made pursuant to swap agreements that were terminated when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (“LBHI”) and certain of its affiliates filed for bankruptcy in 2008. The panel concluded that the Bankruptcy Code provides a safe harbor for the liquidation of such swap agreements and also the distribution of proceeds from the collateral.
On 23 April 2020 the UK Government announced that they will be introducing a temporary ban on the use of statutory demands and winding up petitions where the inability to pay has arisen because of the COVID-19 pandemic.