In England, it is common and quite straightforward for companies and LLPs to grant all assets security by way of a debenture which includes a series of fixed charges over specified assets, an assignment of material leases, insurances and other contracts and a floating charge over assets which are not expressly subject to those fixed charges. That same approach does not work in Scotland, at least not without some adaptation.
The Act provides that a payment clause will be invalid if it makes payment conditional on:
On April 29, 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued its decision in Siegel v. Fitzgerald (In re Circuit City Stores, Inc.), Case No. 19-2240 (4th Cir. Apr. 29, 2021), upholding the constitutionality of a 2017 law that substantially increased the quarterly fees debtors are required to pay to the Office of the United States Trustee (the “US Trustee”) in chapter 11 bankruptcy cases.
Virgin Active Case - The Verdict
The High Court in London yesterday ruled in favour of Virgin Active's controversial restructuring plan. This is the second example of the court exercising its discretion to sanction a contested plan which sought to rely on the so called cross-class cram down; and the first to affect landlords.
The case, heard by Mr Justice Snowden (who has received praise for his balanced approach throughout the court process) sets the precedent for plans being used to bind landlords that vote against them.
We are hopefully now beginning to move out of the various lockdowns and restrictions that have been put in place to deal with the pandemic.
As things begin to return to some form of "normality", businesses might begin to feel some sort of relief. However, the inevitable consequence of normality returning is that some of the temporary rules that have been put in place to assist businesses through these difficulties will fall away.
On March 31, 2021, the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada awarded attorney’s fees to a debtor under a Nevada fee-shifting statute for objecting to a time-barred proof of claim.1 The opinion serves as a warning that filing a proof of claim for time-barred debt may carry consequences other than claim disallowance despite the Supreme Court’s recent holding in Midland Fu
R3, trade body for insolvency and restructuring accountants, said the first quarter of 2021 had seen a sharp fall in companies and individuals becoming bankrupt.
Corporate insolvencies in January to March fell by 31 per cent on the preceding quarter.
The figure was 63 per cent lower than the first quarter of 2020.
The impact of Covid-19 has been felt across the commercial property sector; nowhere more acutely, perhaps, than in "bricks and mortar" retail and hospitality.
Even pre-pandemic, the high street was being forced to adapt to the growth of eCommerce. But consecutive lockdowns have expedited the shift; for some, that change will be irreversible.
A year ago, many predicted that the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines and their impact on the economy would result in a deluge of bankruptcy filings that could rival the Great Recession of 2008-2009. However, as we approach the one-year anniversary of former President Trump declaring the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus a national emergency, that prediction has not come to pass.
The last 12 months have seen frenetic changes in the field of insolvency law. Some of the changes in 2020 were already in the pipeline before we'd even heard of coronavirus but were accelerated by it, some were brought in purely in response to the pandemic and others had nothing to do with it at all.
CIGA
The majority of the changes to legislation apply UK wide and come from the most important piece of insolvency legislation that we've see in a generation - the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020 ("CIGA").