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.
An opinion from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in In re Motors Liquidation Company, relying on the Delaware Supreme Court’s answer to a certified question highlight the need to focus on the details w
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
The Portland Press Herald reports that the bankruptcy trustee for Great Northern Paper has said there is sufficient evidence to pursue claims against the Company’s owners, officers and directors for breach of their fiduciary duties and breach of the duty of loyalty arising from the structuring and execution of a Maine new markets tax credit transaction.
For the past 15 years, trust preferred securities (TruPS) have constituted a significant percentage of the capital of many financial institutions, mostly bank holding companies.Their ubiquity, both as a source of capital and as a common investment for banks, made them a quiet constant for many financial institutions. Even in the chaos of the Great Recession, standard TruPS terms allowed for the deferral of interest payments for up to five years, easing institutions’ cash-flow burdens during those volatile times.
The lead-participant relationship arising from a loan participation has become a fairly contentious one over the last two years as the interests of the two have diverged. For example, loan participants that may be in a troubled condition are never terribly anxious to hear that the lead bank has obtained a current appraisal of the primary collateral. Likewise, a strong loan participant my push a weak lead bank to take more decisive action regarding collecting the loan and possibly foreclosing on the collateral.