Six month extensions to convening periods should not be seen as a fait accompli, particularly if the administrator's application is opposed.

There is a commonly held belief that courts will readily grant an administrator's application for an extension to the convening period. This might have been true once, but it is fast turning into an urban myth, judging by two recent decisions in the Federal Court.

The recent decision of Modcol Pty Ltd v National Buildplan Group Pty Ltd ^[1] addressed whether leave should be granted to a subcontractor to allow it to commence proceedings against a contractor in administration in respect of the subcontractor's rights under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) (the SOP Act).

The NSW Government has accepted some of the key recommendations of the Recommendations of the Independent Inquiry in Construction Industry Insolvency in NSW, including the introduction of bonds. We know that the Government will:

Justice Jacobson's unwillingness to depart from the interests of the majority in relation to Nine Entertainment should give parties confidence that Schemes remain an effective way to effect debt for equity swaps or similar transactions.

The period for submissions on wide-ranging reforms to the NSW construction industry recommended by the Independent Inquiry into Construction Industry Insolvency in NSW is closing soon.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed the decisions of the courts below and held in an unpublished opinion that a secured lender’s credit bid at a Michigan foreclosure sale extinguished all of the Chapter 13 debtor’s indebtedness to the lender, thereby precluding the lender from executing on a prepetition foreclosure judgment obtained against the debtor in Wisconsin. State Bank of Florence v. Miller (In re Miller), 2013 WL 425342 (6th Cir. Feb. 5, 2013).

The final report of the independent inquiry into insolvency in the NSW construction industry was released on Tuesday for public comment.

The report is lengthy and addresses a wide variety of potential causes of contractor insolvency. It makes 44 recommendations, including reforms of the NSW construction industry to reduce both the incidence of contractor insolvency and its impact on other participants in the industry.

A creditor with assets in England should refrain from involvement in a foreign insolvency proceeding if it is at risk of being sued in the foreign court.

Courts are willing, in certain circumstances, to consider the commercial realities of voluntary administrations, and can be flexible.

In a previous Alert that we published in July 2012 entitled “Michigan Court Authorizes Receiver Sale of Real Property Free and Clear of Redemption Rights,” we reported on a decision of a Michigan trial court in Ottawa County, Michigan permitting a state-court receiver to sell real property free and clear of a mortgagor’s redemption rights.