Amantiss Enterprises Limited and Wilbury Limited were placed into creditors’ voluntary liquidation in 1994. Following the appointment of a liquidator, proceedings were issued by the two companies, together with a third company, Framus Limited, against a multitude of defendants including CRH plc, Readymix plc and Kilsaran Concrete Products Limited, alleging breaches of competition law.

In two cases decided towards the end of 2012, the High Court applied reductions to the hourly charge out rate of staff members employed by the liquidator who had been promoted during the course of the liquidation.

The German Insolvency Code requires the management of German limited liability companies (GmbH), stock corporations (AG) and other entities without personal liability to file for the commencement of insolvency proceedings no later than three weeks after the entity has become illiquid (zahlungsunfähig) or overindebted (überschuldet).  

Following some delay, on June 6, 2012 the European Commission finally published its Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council establishing a framework for the recovery and resolution of credit institutions and investment firms (so-called Crisis Management Directive¹ or CMD), which — once adopted — will apply to the 27 member states of the European Union (EU), but may also have relevance for those three contracting states of the Treaty on the European Economic Area (EEA), which are not member states of the EU.

English schemes of arrangement under the Companies Act 2006 (Schemes) have been increasingly used by non-English companies as a powerful tool to restructure their financial indebtedness. Recent prominent examples of German companies that have utilized Schemes to cramdown non-consenting or “holdout” creditors in order to restructure the company’s balance sheet include TeleColumbus, Rodenstock and Primacom.

There are several reasons for this trend: