On 17 April 2024 the UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (theUKJT), chaired by Sir Geoffrey Vos published its Legal Statement on Digital Assets and English Insolvency Law.

2023 marked the highest annual number of corporate insolvencies since 1993, according to figures released by The Insolvency Service this week. While creditors’ voluntary liquidations remained by far the most commonly used process, 2023 saw increases across all processes tracked by the Insolvency Service.

The UK’s latest quarterly insolvency statistics have been published and, as predicted, continue to show a high rate of insolvencies, both in relation to pre-pandemic numbers and by comparison to last year’s Q1 results. The Q1 2023 statistics show a 18% increase in the overall number of registered company insolvencies from Q1 2022 and a 4% decrease from Q4 2022, with a total of 5,747 company insolvencies (seasonally adjusted) during this past quarter.

The UK's latest quarterly company insolvency statistics, published on 2 August, confirm the trends the restructuring community are seeing so far this year and are expecting to continue as we progress through the year.

The High Court has sanctioned the Part 26A restructuring plan of E D & F Man Holdings Limited (the Plan) on which Freshfields has advised the E D & F Man Group (the Group). The Plan represents the first full-scale financial restructuring to utilise cross-class cram-down in respect of a financial creditor class and to amend articles of association. This scenario represents the paradigm use case practitioners and commentators envisaged when Part 26A was introduced in 2020.

In August 2021, Sir Alistair Norris sanctioned the restructuring plan of Amicus Finance PLC (Amicus) (as we wrote about at the time). On 15 November 2021, the judge handed down his reasoning for sanctioning the plan.

Background

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recently ruled in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtors’ attempt to shield contributions to a 401(k) retirement account from “projected disposable income,” therefore making such amounts inaccessible to the debtors’ creditors.^[1] For the reasons explained below, the Sixth Circuit rejected the debtors’ arguments.

Case Background

A statute must be interpreted and enforced as written, regardless, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, “of whether a court likes the results of that application in a particular case.” That legal maxim guided the Sixth Circuit’s reasoning in a recent decision^[1] in a case involving a Chapter 13 debtor’s repeated filings and requests for dismissal of his bankruptcy cases in order to avoid foreclosure of his home.

The UK's latest quarterly company insolvency statistics, published on 30 April, show that insolvency rates remain significantly below pre-pandemic levels, demonstrating the continued success of Government measures in preventing a COVID-19 related wave of insolvencies.

On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton (Case No. 19-357, Jan. 14, 2021), a case which examined whether merely retaining estate property after a bankruptcy filing violates the automatic stay provided for by §362(a) of the Bankruptcy Code. The Court overruled the bankruptcy court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in deciding that mere retention of property does not violate the automatic stay.

Case Background