On 30 August 2022, the Hong Kong Court of Appeal overturned the Court of First Instance's decision in the case of Guy Kwok-Hung Lam v Tor Asia Credit Master Fund LP and held that a creditor's bankruptcy petition presented in Hong Kong should not be allowed to proceed where the petitioned debt was disputed and arose from an agreement with an exclusive jurisdiction clause in favour of a foreign court.

On August 11, 2022, the US National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ (“NAIC”) Executive (EX) Committee adopted a request from the Restructuring Mechanisms (E) Working Group (“RM Working Group”) to reopen the Property & Casualty Insurance Guaranty Association Model Act (#540) (“Model Act #540”) for amendment to ensure that policyholders will retain guaranty fund coverage following an insurance business transfer (“IBT”) or corporate division (“CD”).

In the short time since we last provided an update regarding the bankruptcy cases of Celsius Networks LLC and its affiliates (here), there have been a number of material developments to report.

There is much to report since our last update on Voyager Digital’s bankruptcy case discussed here.

In a recent opinion arising from the Chapter 11 proceedings of Arcapita Bank, Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York affirmed a bankruptcy court decision denying safe-harbor protection to Shari’a-compliant Murabaha investment agreements.¹ Specifically, the district court held that the Murabaha agreemen

Now that their bankruptcy filing is a few weeks behind us, we provide below an update on certain matters of interest in the case of Celsius Networks and its affiliates. Of course, it’s still very early in the bankruptcy case — and in cryptocurrency cases in general — but we have already heard from many distressed opportunity investors that are interested in identifying investment opportunities. Given the novel legal and difficult valuation issues involved, it will be important to keep a close eye on the developments in these proceedings.

In a matter of first impression relating to an important bankruptcy claims administration issue, Judge Sean H. Lane of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, recently denied the ability of a court appointed claims agent to sell and profit from providing direct access to publicly available claims register information. The unsuccessful purchaser of such information was XClaim Inc. (“Xclaim”), a relatively new venture that is seeking to develop a web-based claims trading platform.

In its recent consultation (“Managing the failure of systematic Digital Settlement Asset (including stablecoin) firms”), the Government has proposed that one of two special administration regimes (SARs) which currently apply to certain financial institutions (the Financial Market Infrastructure Special Administration Regime (FMI SAR) or the Payment and E-Money Special Administ

The first week of July has brought with it a flurry of activity in the digital asset markets – but not the type of activity that investors in the space likely hoped for.

Summary

Almost a year to the day since the High Court rejected the Amigo loans group's previous proposal for a scheme of arrangement, on 23 May 2022, Mr Justice Trower sanctioned the group's latest scheme proposal which would create the conditions for the group to resume lending and resolve the claims of thousands of the group's customers arising from its lending practices.