Two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions demonstrate that the corporate attribution doctrine is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

Court approval of a sale process in receivership or Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (“BIA”) proposal proceedings is generally a procedural order and objectors do not have an appeal as of right; they must seek leave and meet a high test in order obtain it. However, in Peakhill Capital Inc. v.

Scope 

The recast EIR continues to apply to all European member states other than Denmark and has been extended in scope to new categories of proceedings, including rehabilitation proceedings, which are set out in annex A. The emphasis remains on collective proceedings and, consequently, the UK’s receivership and administrative receivership regimes remain outside the scope of the recast regulation. 

Cross-border insolvency of multinational groups

WGV aims to agree a set of key principles and draft text for a regime to address crossborder insolvency in the context of enterprise groups (defined widely to mean any entity, regardless of its legal form, that is engaged in economic activities and may be governed by insolvency law). This has started to take a form most suited to a stand-alone supplement to the Model Law. The Group’s secretariat produced a draft legislative text, incorporating three principles agreed by WGV. The three principles are:

Shortly before insolvency, financially distressed companies often receive monies which appear "morally" to be due to third parties, such as customer deposits or monies due to be received by the company as agent on behalf of its principal. If the company then enters an insolvency process, can it keep the money, leaving the customer/principal with no more than the right to prove, as an unsecured creditor in the insolvency? Or should the money be protected by some form of trust in favour of the "morally entitled" recipient?