In Uralkali v Rowley and another [2020] EWHC 3442 (Ch), the High Court confirmed that it is unlikely that an officeholder would be found to owe a duty of care to participants in a sale process out of an insolvent estate. This is an important decision which will give officeholder’s considerable comfort that operating an administration or liquidation sale in the ordinary course is unlikely to expose them to risk of liability to a bidder for the way the process is run.

At 11pm on 31 December 2020, the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) came into effect implementing the UK’s exit from the single market. The TCA covers some important things in great detail and some things more scantly. Unfortunately for insolvency practitioners, it is largely silent on almost all issues relating to insolvency, meaning that, despite not technically having a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, for insolvency practitioners it may certainly feel that way.

Recognition of insolvency proceedings

30 January 2019 marks the seventh anniversary of when the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) started to apply and, as registrations against serial numbers and/or consumer property can only have a duration of 7 years, that means those types of registrations (if made in 2012) will expire automatically this year unless they are renewed.

If you have made registrations on the PPS register that are for a period of 7 years (or less):

To perfect a security interest by possession, a secured party must have actual or apparent possession of the property. A contractual right to possess is not enough.

We now have the first judicial guidance in Australia on the concept of "perfection by possession" under the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (PPSA) (Knauf Plasterboard Pty Ltd v Plasterboard West Pty Ltd (In Liquidation) (Receivers and Managers Appointed) [2017] FCA 866).

What is "perfection by possession"?