On 18 March 2021, the UK Government published its white paper on restoring trust in audit and corporate governance. On 31 May 2022, the Government published its response to the consultation.

On 30 March 2022, the English court sanctioned the most recent restructuring plan proposed by Smile Telecoms Holdings Limited (Smile).

Pandemic related restrictions on winding up companies come to an end.

“[E]nsnared between his involvement in a business that is legal under the laws of Arizona but illegal under federal law,” one debtor’s chapter 13 petition was recently dismissed due to his undisputed violations of the Controlled Substances Act.

On 25 January 2022, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published draft guidance on how it will approach ‘compromises’ by regulated firms. The guidance is expressed to cover restructuring plans, schemes of arrangement and CVAs.

In our last blogpost (here) we reported how the court had, for the first time, exercised its power under s. 901C(4) Companies Act 2006 to exclude a company’s members and all but one class of its creditors from voting on a restructuring plan under Part 26A. The facts of this case are set out in more detail in that blogpost.

Summary

For the first time, the court has exercised its power under s. 901C(4) Companies Act 2006 to exclude a company’s members and all but one class of its creditors from voting on a restructuring plan under Part 26A. The court was satisfied that only one class of creditors had a genuine economic interest in the company and noted that “this was not a marginal case”.

Key drivers for the court’s decision (see more detail below) were:

The National Security and Investment Act 2021 (the Act) comes into force on 4 January 2022. The Act sets out the UK’s new national security screening regime. The Act replaces, and significantly extends, the UK government’s power to investigate and intervene in transactions which pose, or could pose, threats to the UK’s national security (see our earlier related blog post).

A new Act, which received Royal Assent on 15 December 2021, extends the existing directors’ disqualification regime to the directors of dissolved companies.

“Messrs. Woods and Wu are fraudsters,” Judge Christopher S. Sontchi declared in the opening salvo of his scathing opinion. According to the former Chief Judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, Woods and Wu fraudulently obtained a Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) loan on behalf of Urban Commons Queensway, LLC, which indirectly operates the Queen Mary, a cruise ship turned hotel docked near Long Beach, CA.