Harmonising EU insolvency law: colegislators reach agreement on compromise text for a new directive — key changes and what is next 8 DECEMBER 2025 EU insolvency law © A&O Shearman 2 EU directive harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law Overview and status The European Parliament and the Council (the co-legislators) reached political agreement on the proposed Directive harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law on 19 November 2025. The final compromise text was confirmed and circulated in early December 2025.
A knowing breach of the payment prohibition under insolvency law cannot be inferred from a breach of the obligation to file for insolvency.
On September 12, 2024, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed a trial court decision that had rejected a bank’s assertion of the in pari delicto defense to aiding and abetting claims brought by the bankruptcy trustee for a debtor that had allegedly perpetrated a Ponzi scheme. Kelley v. BMO Harris Bank Nat’l Ass’n, 2024 WL 4158179 (8th Cir. Sept. 12, 2024).
Notwithstanding that the requisite statutory majority was obtained in the relevant creditors’ scheme meeting, the Hong Kong Companies Court refused to sanction a scheme of arrangement propounded by a company that professed to be insolvent in a recent judgment [2024] HKCFI 2216.
The A&O Shearman team, together with counsel Michael Lok and Jasmine Cheung, acted for the opposing creditor in these Scheme proceedings.
Following the judgment of the High Court in June 2024 finding two former directors of BHS liable for (amongst other things) wrongful trading and breaches of their directors' duties to creditors in the prelude to the insolvency of the BHS group[1], Mr.
The U.S. Supreme Court held last week in Truck Insurance Exchange v. Kaiser Gypsum Co. that an insurance company with financial responsibility for bankruptcy claims is a “party in interest” with the right to object to a Chapter 11 reorganization plan.
Section 1109(b) of the Bankruptcy Code provides:
In a welcome clarification for administrators, the UK Supreme Court in the recent case of R (on the application of Palmer) v Northern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court[1], held that an administrator appointed under the Insolvency Act 1986 (IA 1986) is not an “officer” of the company for the purposes of section 194(3) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (TULRCA).
In this client alert, we set out the key findings by the Court of Appeal in Darty Holdings SAS v Geoffrey Carton-Kelly [2023] EWCA Civ 1135, which considers an appeal against the High Court decision that a repayment by Comet Group plc (“Comet”) of £115 million of unsecured intra-group debt to Kesa International Ltd (“KIL”) was a preference under section 239 of the Insolvency Act 1986 (the “Act”).
Background to the Case
Whilst commonplace in the U.S., uptier transactions in which a borrower teams up with a subset of creditors to issue new “super priority” debt by amending or exchanging existing debt documents, have not been widely used in Europe.
However, with increasing macro economic pressures and financial market instability, we may see more European borrowers taking advantage of flexibility in cov-lite debt documentation to implement liability management transactions as an alternative to, or even as part of, more formal restructurings.
This week, the Ninth Circuit addresses whether text messages can violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s prohibition on “prerecorded voice” messages, and it considers whether debtors who paid statutory fees under an unconstitutionally nonuniform bankruptcy provision are entitled to a refund.