The Sino-Ocean restructuring plan is the first to be sanctioned in 2025 – but it starts the year off with a very interesting bang. In a relatively short (and commendably clear) judgment, the Court addresses head on:

At the end of February 2023, the High Court sanctioned seven restructuring plans for companies in the Lifeways group. Lifeways is a group providing supported living and specialist residential, support and care services at properties throughout the UK.

The case raised several interesting aspects, particularly in relation to the conduct of creditor meetings for a restructuring plan where cross class cram down is sought, and whether there is a read across from scheme case law on this issue.

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.

In bankruptcy as in federal jurisprudence generally, to characterize something with the near-epithet of “federal common law” virtually dooms it to rejection.

On 18 March 2021, the UK Government published its long-awaited white paper on restoring trust in audit and corporate governance.

This follows a series of high-profile audit errors and major corporate collapses, including those of BHS in 2016 and Carillion in 2018, which led the Government to commission three independent reviews into different aspects of the UK’s audit, reporting and corporate governance systems.

The white paper targets large listed and AIM-listed companies, and large private companies where there is a public interest, and primarily focuses on:

In January 2020 we reported that, after the reconsideration suggested by two Supreme Court justices and revisions to account for the Supreme Court’s Merit Management decision,[1] the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stood by its origina

It seems to be a common misunderstanding, even among lawyers who are not bankruptcy lawyers, that litigation in federal bankruptcy court consists largely or even exclusively of disputes about the avoidance of transactions as preferential or fraudulent, the allowance of claims and the confirmation of plans of reorganization. However, with a jurisdictional reach that encompasses “all civil proceedings . . .

I don’t know if Congress foresaw, when it enacted new Subchapter V of Chapter 11 of the Code[1] in the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (“SBRA”), that debtors in pending cases would seek to convert or redesignate their cases as Subchapter V cases when SBRA became effective on February 19, 2020, but it was foreseeable.

Our February 26 post [1] reported on the first case dealing with the question whether a debtor in a pending Chapter 11 case may redesignate it as a case under Subchapter V, [2] the new subchapter of Chapter 11 adopted by the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 (“SBRA”), which became effective on February 19.

Our February 26 post entitled “SBRA Springs to Life”^[1] reported on the first case known to me that dealt with the issue whether a debtor in a pending Chapter 11 case should be permitted to amend its petition to designate it as a case under Subchapter V,^[2] the new subchapter of Chapter 11 adopted by