Besteht für deutsche Unternehmen das Risiko, erhaltene Zahlungen zurückzahlen zu müssen?
Mit der Zunahme grenzüberschreitender Geschäftstätigkeit zwischen Deutschland einerseits und Mittel- und Osteuropa (CEE) andererseits ist das Risiko der Rückforderung von Zahlungen, die ein Unternehmen von einem nun insolventen Geschäftspartner erhalten hat, weiterhin von wesentlichem Belang für deutsche Unternehmen.
1. The CMS Law-Now article “Arbitration agreement does not prevent winding up petition” updated the position in England & Wales following the Privy Council decision in Sian Participation Corporation (In Liquidation) v Halimeda International Ltd [2024] UKPC 16 (“Sian”).
Sanctions regulations won't prevent administration orders but may affect timings and require undertakings
Unregistered and time-barred foreign judgments can found the basis of insolvency proceedings in England
The English High Court has ruled that unregistered and time-barred foreign judgments can found the basis of insolvency proceedings in England.
The threat of insolvency proceedings can be a strong form of leverage to obtain a successful outcome on enforcement of a judgment debt, as judgment debtors will often pay up when faced with the prospect of being found insolvent.
Foreign money judgments
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.
2023 has been a remarkable year with the past several months displaying an upward trend for the Business Restructuring + Insolvency Group at Morrison Foerster. We would like to provide our friends and clients with an overview of our current matters, each of which demonstrate our track record of being a go-to firm for complex restructurings across industries and jurisdictions.