The Dubai Court of First Instance concludes that preventive composition, restructuring, bankruptcy, and liquidation are only possible if the debtor company has existing assets.

In a recent judgment issued on 26 April 2023 the Dubai Court of First Instance rejected the liquidation application of an indebted company on the basis that the company does not have any assets that could be liquidated.

Over the past year or so, we have seen a number of examples of Dubai Courts taking an extremely cautious approach to handling debtor-led bankruptcy cases, particularly in relation to determining whether there is a legitimate distressed financial position and enquiring as to the conduct of managers leading to the bankruptcy of companies.

In a judgment rendered on 10 October 2021, the Dubai Court of First Instance had concluded that current and former directors and managers of Marka were personally liable towards creditors of the company merely on the basis that the assets of the company were not sufficient to pay at least 20% of its debts. The 20% threshold was set in onshore Federal Decree Law No. (9) of 2016 on Bankruptcy (the Bankruptcy Law) as it then was, and the Court determined that liability applied to current and former directors and managers without distinction where the threshold is not met.

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

On 9 June 2021, the Dubai Court of Cassation adopting a restrictive interpretation of the UAE Federal Law No 11 of 1992 and its amendments (the Civil Procedure Code) has added a requirement for the success of a debt recovery claim through a payment order application to the summary judge: there must be written evidence that the debt was either accepted or acknowledged by the debtor. This article provides an overview of the legal requirements of the payment order claim and what this new requirement of the Dubai Court of Cassation means for creditors in Dubai.

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