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Summary

Restructuring Plans (“Plan(s)”) were introduced by the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 (“CIGA”) as a rescue tool for companies in financial difficulty to compromise debt and other liabilities owed to secured and unsecured creditors and its members, with the court’s sanction.

The new Companies House Register of Overseas Entities (the “OE Register”) became operational and key parts of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act (“ECTEA”) came into force on 1 August 2022.

The land registration elements of ECTEA have been deferred and will come into force on 5 September 2022 – this second stage of implementation will with effect from such date have an immediate impact on the registration of property acquisitions and new leases and security being taken over those acquisitions/leases.

Summary

The Insolvency Service has released its report on CVAs (the “Report”), which was commissioned in response to the significant concerns raised by the commercial property sector in recent years and the legal challenges launched by landlords against a number of CVAs.

Cryptoassets are in the spotlight for many reasons. The use of cryptocurrencies as an alternative to fiat currencies is being explored and tested further by global events. Their correlation with traditional stores of value is being tested in volatile markets. Their status as both a potential means of avoiding sanctions and as a possible means of funding charitable and humanitarian causes is being demonstrated and discussed.

On 16 March 2022, the Slovak Parliament approved the anticipated new act on solving threatened bankruptcy (the Act) and also amended related legislative documents. It implements the Directive (EU) 2019/1023 on preventive restructuring, whose implementation was postponed by one year to 17 July 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Act aims to reform insolvency in Slovakia and make preventive mechanisms effective enough to reduce the number of bankruptcies.

To whom does the Act apply?

A bankruptcy court’s recent decision in Bailey Tool & Mfg. Co., et al. v. Republic Bus. Credit (In re Bailey Tool & Mfg. Co.), Adv. No. 16-03025-SGJ (Bankr. N.D. Tex. Dec. 23, 2021) serves as a reminder for lenders that they should avoid certain actions when dealing with distressed borrowers. Specifically, in Bailey, a bankruptcy judge found a lender squarely at fault for its borrower’s bankruptcy and subsequent liquidation, and held the lender liable to the borrower’s bankruptcy estate for various breach of contract, tort, and bankruptcy claims.

Within the past 18 months, two bankruptcy courts have used the same factors, but reached opposite conclusions, about the characterization of two merchant cash advance funding transactions as either a “true sale” or not a “true sale” – and instead, a disguised financing. In doing so, the courts’ decisions confirm the importance of appropriate structuring to achieve true sale treatment.

Before the new bankruptcy law (Royal Decree 53/2019) (the “Bankruptcy Law”) came into effect in Oman, the laws and regulations regulating bankruptcies were limited and simply addressed in laws such as the commercial law (Royal Decree 55/1990 (as amended)) (the “Commercial Law”) and the commercial companies law (Royal Decree 18/2019) (the “Commercial Companies Law”). These laws provided the framework for the bankruptcy of a person and the liquidation of insolvent companies only.

Business rates liability is complex and the question of who is liable if occupiers become insolvent is one that often arises during periods of economic uncertainty, such as the pandemic.

Business rates liability for insolvent companies

Business rates liability attaches to specific units of property known as “hereditaments”.

Insolvency related claims in relation to contracts subject to arbitration agreements continue to result in interesting challenges for the English court. In a recent decision the court had to decide whether an application for a summary judgment amounted to a step in the proceedings such that the applicant had waived its right to seek a stay in favour of arbitration.

Background