On Jan. 19, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated a bankruptcy court decision awarding Ultra Petroleum Corp. noteholders $201 million in make-whole payments and $186 million in post-petition interest. Under the note agreement, upon a bankruptcy filing, the issuer is obligated for a make-whole amount equal to the discounted value of the remaining scheduled payments (including principal and interest that would be due after prepayment) less the principal amount of the notes.
If your company has gone into liquidation and you are in the process of setting up a new business, you may want to use the same or a similar company name. However, if you either act as director or are involved in the management of the new company with the same or similar name as the insolvent company, you run the risk of both civil and criminal liability if you don’t comply with the restrictions under the Insolvency Act 1986.
Once again, the statistics show an increase in corporate and personal insolvencies nationally, with a reported 16,090 corporate insolvencies and 115,299 personal insolvencies in the UK in 2018. While the media is focusing on how this reflects on the economy and the government, insolvency specialist Tony Sampson looks at what it means for the millions of creditors involved in those insolvencies. In short, what will those creditors actually receive?
The Bottom Line
Profits made by a limited company are distributed to shareholders through the declaration of dividends. Quite often, for example in the case of SME businesses, the directors and shareholders of the company are one and the same. In such businesses, directors might take a minimum salary and pay the rest of their remuneration by way of dividend. For some time, this has been a tax-efficient means for directors to be remunerated.
However, before a company is able to pay a dividend, two main criteria must be met:
The Bottom Line
In one of the first applications of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the scope of section 546(e) in Merit Management, Delaware Bankruptcy Court Judge Carey found that section 546(e)’s safe harbor did not apply to fraudulent transfers between two parties that were not financial institutions, even if the transaction passed through financial intermediaries.
What Happened
The Bottom Line
In In re ENNIA Caribe Holding N.V., 18-12908 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y. Dec. 20, 2018), a bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York recognized a foreign insurance company’s rehabilitation proceeding in Curaçao as a “foreign main proceeding,” pursuant to Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code, over objections from the insurance company’s nondebtor parent company. In doing so, the court examined, among other things, what is required for a “collective proceeding” in a foreign insolvency.
What Happened
The Bottom Line
The Bottom Line
The Bottom Line
The Fifth Circuit recently held in RPD Holdings, L.L.C. v. Tech Pharmacy Services (In re Provider Meds, L.L.C.), No. 17-1113 (5th Cir. Oct. 29, 2018), that a patent license that was not specifically listed on the debtors’ bankruptcy schedules was automatically deemed rejected where it was not assumed within 60 days of the cases’ conversion from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.
What Happened?