The out of Court appointment processes are broadly similar to the processes under the Insolvency Rules 1986 with some minor amendments. The most significant change is the abolition of the prescribed forms for appointment documents.

Whatever type of appointment (out of Court by company/directors, out of Court by Qualifying Floating Charge Holder ("QFCH"), application to Court), the Consent to Act form and contents is dealt with by r3.2.

Appointment out of Court by directors/the Company

Applications

Rule 12 sets out rules relating to applications, (excluding administration applications, winding up petitions and creditors' bankruptcy petitions) including:

Schedule 5 of the new rules provides some clarifications on the calculation of time periods:

1. Days - CPR 2.8(1) applies meaning that a period of time expressed as a number of days means clear days, meaning you do not count the day on which the period begins, and the if the end of the period is defined by reference to an event, the day on which that event occurs.

Expedited petitions

The Court has recently announced it will be publishing some standard forms for insolvency procedures, to be published under the Insolvency Practice Direction.

The forms are expected to be available towards the end of March.

This is the current list of what will be published. There may be some amendments.

Forms being hosted by Court under Practice Direction (these were identified as forms to "keep" from Schedule 4)

Administration

The language of the rules has been amended and there is now more reference to delivery of documents rather than service. Rules 1.40 - 1.53 set out rules relating to delivery wherever documents are required to be delivered by the new rules.

These rules include the following headings:

On March 22, 2017, the United States Supreme Court held that bankruptcy courts cannot approve a “structured dismissal”—a dismissal with special conditions or that does something other than restoring the “prepetition financial status quo”—providing for distributions that deviate from the Bankruptcy Code’s priority scheme absent the consent of affected creditors. Czyzewski v.Jevic Holding Corp., No. 15-649, 580 U.S. ___ (2017), 2017 WL 1066259, at *3 (Mar. 22, 2017).

This article was first published in Growth Business, and the original article can be found online here.

On January 17, 2017, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its long-anticipated opinion in Marblegate Asset Management, LLC v. Education Management Finance Corp., 1 ruling that Section 316(b) of the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, 15 U.S.C. § 77ppp(b) (the “Act”), prohibits only non-consensual amendments to core payment terms of bond indentures.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently articulated a standard to determine what claims may be barred against a purchaser of assets "free and clear" of claims pursuant to section 363(f) of the Bankruptcy Code and highlighted procedural due process concerns with respect to enforcement.¹  The decision arose out of litigation regarding certain defects, including the well-known "ignition switch defect," affecting certain GM vehicles.  GM's successor (which acquired GM's assets in a section 363 sale in 2009) asserted that a "free and clear" provisi