Much has been written of late about data breaches and the liabilities for the unauthorized acquisition of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) from institutions. But what about when the alleged “breach”--the release of information --is voluntarily and/or legally compelled? What are the risks to businesses when they sell assets that include PII? What liabilities do they face? What are the rights of customers?

Radio Shack – The pioneer of PII data collection

The Companies Act 2014 (the "Act") was recently passed by the Irish parliament and is expected to be brought into force on 1 June 2015 (the "Commencement Date").  The Act is largely a consolidation and modernisation exercise. 

However, there are a number of significant areas which modify existing companies legislation and which lenders will need to consider both in the run-up to the Commencement Date and afterwards.  In particular these relate to:

The Court of Appeal has recently clarified that if a foreign company, being a shareholder of a Cayman Islands company, issues a winding up petition against that company and there is evidence that the petitioning company will be unable to pay an adverse costs order if the respondent is successful at trial, then the Cayman Islands court has an inherent jurisdiction to order the petitioning foreign company to provide security for the respondent's costs – Re Dyxnet Holdings¹.

In Lewis Holdings Limited & Others v.

Last week, the Cayman Islands Court of Appeal handed down its judgment in Weavering Macro Fixed Income Fund Limited (in Liquidation) (the "Fund") v Stefan Peterson and Hans Ekstrom (the "Directors").  The appeal from the first instance decision was allowed and the Grand Court's order of 26 August 2011 was set aside.  

On 26 November 2014 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the "Privy Council") handed down its judgment in the appeal brought by Stichting Shell Pensioenfonds ("Shell") against the joint liquidators of Fairfield Sentry Ltd ("Fairfield Sentry") (the "Liquidators"), the largest feeder fund to Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC ("BLMIS").¹ 

On 10 November 2014, the Privy Council handed down its decision in Singularis Holdings Limited v PricewaterhouseCoopers¹, together with its decision in a related case, PricewaterhouseCoopers v Saad Investments Company Limited², both on appeal from the Court of Appeal in Bermuda. The decision provides guidance on the application of the principle of modified universalism.

On Monday, we released three new research indices tracking distress in U.S. financial markets.   

The indices use Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing data to signal underlying financial distress which may not be reflected in broader stock market averages.  The indices and the full quarterly report can be found at www.distressindex.com.

The “FBT/TrBK Distress Indices” comprise three different measurements based on Chapter 11 filings:

A recent decision¹ from the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands demonstrates a flexible use of the scheme of arrangement process to achieve a commercial resolution of an application to remove the SPhinX Group's joint official liquidators ("JOLs"). 

As electronic discovery has become more prevalent and voluminous, national standards for the preservation of evidence have evolved dramatically in the past decade. Through a proliferation of electronic discovery orders involving discovery compliance, courts have addressed when the duty to preserve evidence arises, signifying a party’s duty to issue a “litigation hold.” Courts have not answered, however, whether a party can withhold documents generated before issuing a litigation hold on the basis of work product protection.