In general terms, section 110 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 (the 2015 Act) amends the provisions of the Company Director Disqualification Act 1986 (the CDDA 1986) in relation to directors’ disqualification.

One of the changes introduced is that the Secretary of State will be able to apply to the court for a compensation order against a director who has been disqualified where creditors have suffered identifiable losses from the director’s misconduct¹.

A recent Western Australian decision has provided guidance on the limits of an insolvent contractor’s ability to enforce an adjudication determination where the principal has an offsetting claim.

4 February 2015 saw Copenship A/S, a significant charterer of bulk vessels, and its subsidiary Copenship Bunkers A/S, file for bankruptcy in the Copenhagen Maritime and Commercial Court.

The bankruptcy of Copenship marks the latest in a series of recent high-profile shipping insolvencies, and with no significant improvement to the bulk market in sight there may well be more to come.

When a company is being wound up in a given jurisdiction, can an anti-suit injunction be sought against relevant creditors or members to prevent them from pursuing proceedings in another jurisdiction with a view to securing priority in the liquidation?

This was the issue for the Privy Council to decide in Stichting Shell Pensioenfonds v Krys and another (British Virgin Islands) (26 November 2014), in what is an interesting instance of the application of anti-suit injunctions within the insolvency framework.

Facts

As the bankruptcy of OW Bunker has shown, insolvency in a shipping context can cause significant, far reaching and immediate legal uncertainty. The interaction of insolvency procedures, jurisdictional issues, and the complex web of contractual relationships involved in shipping insolvencies creates unique practical and legal challenges. In this Briefing, we consider from a Hong Kong perspective some of the practical issues that commonly arise.

Insolvency in the Hong Kong Courts

Extra Extra Read All About It. It was a cataclysmic weekend in college football for the Big 12 conference. The college football playoff committee elevated the one-loss Ohio State Buckeyes (Big 10) into the fourth and final slot in the inaugural College Football Playoff, taming a one-loss Baylor Bears (Big 12) sloth and a one-loss TCU Horned Frogs (Big 12) colony in the process. Some naysayers may look to the Big 12′s soft schedules and the absence of a league tiebreaker game as drivers of the committee’s decision.

If you’re a secured lender, news of a Chapter 11 filing by your borrower can be unsettling. The commencement of a Chapter 11 case triggers an “automatic stay” which, with certain exceptions, operates as an injunction against all actions affecting the debtor or its property.3 Under the automatic stay, a secured lender holding a security interest in the debtor’s property may not repossess or foreclose on that property without the permission of the bankruptcy court.

On 9 July 2013, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a new Directive on package travel and assisted travel arrangements to replace the Package Travel Directive¹ (the Directive) which has been long thought to have become outdated in the face of the growth of the internet and the “dynamic packaging” industry. Following extensive consultation with industry representatives and trade bodies, an amended version of the Commission’s proposal was adopted by the European Parliament on 12 March 2014 (the Proposed Directive).

The inclusion of pre-bankruptcy waivers in “standard issue” credit documents has generated a host of litigation in bankruptcy cases about the enforceability of such provisions.

In a closely-watched case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit recently affirmed the decision of the Delaware District Court, holding that bankruptcy claims are subject to disallowance under section 502(d) of the Bankruptcy Code despite their subsequent sale to a third-party. In In re KB Toys, Inc., No. 13-1197 (3d Cir. Nov.