Both businesses and individuals have suffered financially throughout 2020 as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic.
Soon after Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) in March 2020, the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) moved quickly to address potential COVID-19 related fraud. One area of early focus was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a program under the CARES Act that provides loans to small businesses to help pay employees. The Fraud Section set up a team devoted to PPP fraud and, within two months of the passage of the CARES Act, had charged several individuals.
STOP RIGHT NOW, THANK YOU VERY MUCH – I NEED SOME TIME FOR A RESCUE.
THE PART A1 MORATORIUM
The moratorium is an insolvency process introduced by the Corporate Insolvency Governance Act 2020. It allows a financially distressed company to obtain temporary protection from creditor action, while the company attempts to rescue itself as a going concern. It is a debtor-in-possession process, overseen by a monitor—an insolvency practitioner.
Who can use it?
The UK’s reformed restructuring regime shows its force with the first successful cross-class cram-down following the introduction of the new restructuring plan. A quick legal update on the key features of the restructuring plan and the analysis of the recent cases can be found in the infographic below.
Contributors to this update were Howard Morris, Amrit Khosa, Jai Mudhar, Joe Donaghey, and Haania Amir.
On Sunday, December 27, 2020, President Trump signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which provides $900 billion in a second wave of economic stimulus relief for industries and individuals faced with challenges from the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Coronavirus continues to have serious financial implications for businesses and this week the wrongful trading provisions have been suspended (for the second time) until 31 April 2020.
The Golden Globe Award-winning Netflix series is not the only ‘Crown’ returning prior to Christmas 2020. HMRC’s preferential creditor status is also being restored on 1 December 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered unprecedented levels of business disruption and forced numerous companies into bankruptcy in an effort to preserve dwindling liquidity and postpone creditor demands. Retailers, whose brick-and-mortar locations were already struggling to adapt to an increasingly online marketplace, have been among the hardest hit. A number of bankruptcy judges, faced with the prospect of an avalanche of forced liquidations, have thrown these debtors a lifeline by approving requests to suspend lease payments.
We are still in the early days of the economic shock of the coronavirus, with positive trends not yet clear. Restructuring specialists at Keystone Law have combined our experiences of enquiries from businesses, Insolvency Practitioners (IPs) and other stakeholders during lockdown and noted the following developments which will help businesses and advisors prepare for a post-lockdown business environment: