The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has decisively redrawn the boundaries between arbitration agreements and insolvency proceedings in the case of Sian Participation Corp (In Liquidation) v Halimeda International Ltd.[1]

In Sian Participation Corp v Halimedia International Ltd [2024] UKPC 16, Lords Briggs and Hamblen considered the issue of whether insolvency proceedings should be stayed where the underlying debt was covered by an arbitration agreement.

Insolvenzanträge von namhaften Projektentwicklern und Immobiliengesellschaften stellen die betroffenen Unternehmen und ihre Gläubiger vor große Herausforderungen und setzen die gesamte Immobilienbranche unter Druck. Gleichzeitig gewinnen alternative Restrukturierungsmethoden, die außerhalb oder bereits im Vorfeld eines formalen Insolvenzverfahrens stattfinden, zunehmend an Bedeutung.

Vor diesem Hintergrund fällt auch vermehrt das Stichwort “StaRUG“, wenn es um die Restrukturierung von immobilienhaltenden Gesellschaften geht.

The much-anticipated BHS judgment is here.

For those without the time to digest all 533 pages immediately, we have summarised the key points below:

In einer aktuellen Entscheidung hat das BAG festgestellt, dass die Vermutungswirkung des § 125 Abs. 1 Nr. 1 InsO auch dann eingreift, wenn bis zu einem anvisierten Stilllegungszeitpunkt noch viel Zeit vergeht und für ein Unternehmen in der Zwischenzeit – anders als prognostiziert – doch ein Erwerber gefunden wird (BAG, Urteil vom 17. August 2023 – 6 AZR 56/23, PM).

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that there was no actionable infringement where an uncompleted building sold under the authority of a bankruptcy court was later completed. Cornice & Rose International, LLC v. Four Keys, LLC et al., Case No. 22-1976 (8th Cir. Aug. 11, 2023) (Loken, Shepard, Kelly, JJ.) (per curiam). The Court explained that the architectural copyright claims were precluded by the bankruptcy court’s order approving the sale.

On May 30, 2023, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit released its long-awaited opinion addressing Purdue Pharma’s confirmed chapter 11 bankruptcy plan. Although the appeal challenged more than one aspect of the plan, the Court’s decision was highly anticipated for its discussion of one topic in particular: nonconsensual third-party releases.

In Depth

THIRD-PARTY RELEASES

David Pollard has been looking at the statutory provisions dealing with substantial disposals by a company in administration in the first 8 weeks of the administration. When is a potential purchaser a connected person under the new provisions that come into force at the end of April 2021? The new legislation was the Administration (restrictions on Disposals etc to Connected Persons Regulations 2021 and para 60A in Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986.

The Privy Council has handed down judgment in two appeals (ETJL v Halabi; ITGL v Fort Trustees [2022] UKPC 36) concerning the nature and scope of the right of a trustee to recover from or be indemnified out of trust assets in respect of liabilities and other expenditure properly incurred by the trustee. A seven-member Board was convened because the Privy Council was asked to reconsider part of its decision in Investec Trust (Guernsey) Ltd v Glenalla Properties Ltd [2019] AC 271.

In a decision rendered on June 6, 2022, Justice Sotomayor authored the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the case Siegel v. Fitzgerald, holding that a statutory increase in United States Trustee’s fees violated the “uniformity” requirement of the Bankruptcy Clause set forth in Article I, § 7, cl. 4 of the United States Constitution, which empowers Congress to establish “uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”1