Decision establishes framework for future rulings that covenants in midstream agreements do not run with the land.

Before I hazard any kind of answer to the above, let me first declare my interest in the #Brexit / #Bremain debate, from the perspective of an insolvency lawyer.

On February 17, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a joint rule that would govern the resolution of large broker-dealers that are designated as “covered financial companies” under the Orderly Liquidation Authority (OLA) provisions (Title II) of the Dodd-Frank Act.

So-called “Creditor Portals”, and other similarly titled electronic platforms by which insolvency practitioners typically circulate any meaningful information to creditors about insolvent estates, have been a bugbear of mine ever since they were first used a little while ago. Don’t get me wrong; I absolutely applaud the attempt which they represent to minimise the amount of unnecessary paperwork circulating around the country and the savings of cost which they bring to the administration of insolvent estates where the cost of copying and posting alone would be absolutely frightening today.

Most companies do not own all of the intellectual property (IP) rights that their businesses rely on. It is not uncommon for some portion of a company’s IP rights to be in-licensed from other persons or entities under a license agreement. In such cases, the licensee has contractual rights to use the IP that is the subject of an in-license but not full ownership of such IP. In the day-to-day operations of a company, the distinction between owned IP rights and in-licensed IP rights can easily get lost.

In a written statement this morning from Lord Faulks QC, Minister of State for Civil Justice, the government has announced that, from April 2016, insolvency litigation will no longer be exempt from what have been abbreviated to “the LASPO reforms”.

Regular readers of my blogs over the years will know that I never pass up a chance to use a musical analogy for business problems. As an insolvency lawyer with a second calling treading the boards, my legal practice and my music frequently vie for my attention: never more so than during the Christmas season.

I am often asked “what do you do”? If I reply “a regulatory solicitor”, this inevitably elicits a blank expression from the enquirer (be that a non-lawyer or lawyer), so I go on to the more long-winded version, that I am a criminal solicitor who advises business owners and other stakeholders on how to stay on the right side of the criminal law, and defends them when they get it wrong.

It was far from a secret that a veritable smorgasbord of phased changes to insolvency law were coming in on 1 October. The legal and insolvency press has been riddled with it, and frankly the flavours were all a bit predictable. The commentators falling over themselves to ask mundane questions such as “are you ready for…?” and “what will happen now…?” are really just asking “we are really up to date on the new law, aren’t we brilliant?”; of course you are, but you’re not getting any marks for originality.

The news in January of this year that the government planned to increase the bankruptcy petition threshold to £5,000 (subject to parliamentary scrutiny) from 1 October was greeted with mixed reaction. On the one hand, it was welcomed in that the threshold of £750 which had been in place since 1986 was wildly out of date.