JPLs play an unheralded but crucial mediating role in Bermuda

All bankruptcy lawyers (and most long-suffering trade creditors) know that creditors who receive payments from a debtor within the “preference period” – 90 days before a voluntary bankruptcy case was filed, or 1 year if the creditor is an “insider” of the debtor – are at risk of lawsuit to return those payments to the bankruptcy estate. Pre-petition claims the creditor hold are no automatic defense.

While it has taken five years of committee and court efforts, the “Stern Amendments” to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure will become effective December 1, 2016. These amendments will streamline litigant and court procedures in resolving subject matter jurisdiction matters as between district courts and bankruptcy courts.

On September 9, 2016, Hanjin Shipping Co. won a ruling protecting its assets in the U.S. against creditors, while the shipping line proceeds with its reorganization in South Korea. Hanjin filed for relief under Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey (U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge John K. Sherwood in Newark, N.J.).

Editor’s Note: This is a new one for us at The Bankruptcy Cave. We are starting a series of primers, covering a narrow range of law but with more depth than just “here’s a recent case.” And also, we have our first edition of “The Bankruptcy Cave Embedded Briefs” – top quality briefs on a certain issue, feel free to download to your own form files or come back and grab ’em when you need ’em. Let us know what you think – we are always trying to improve things around here for our readers.

This is a short guide to solvent voluntary liquidations of companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. It is not intended as a substitute for full legal advice but more as an aide memoire to the procedures involved.

1. Why is the company being put into solvent voluntary liquidation/being "wound up"?

A BVI company generally has no limit on its duration. However, like all good things, a company may come to the end of its useful life. This may be because the assets it held have been transferred out or sold.

As the Supreme Court recently reminded us in Bullard v. Blue Hills Bank, not all orders in bankruptcy cases are immediately appealable as a matter of right. Only those orders deemed sufficiently “final” may be appealed without leave under 28 U.S.C. § 158(a).

In 1571, Parliament enacted a law, sometimes known as the Statute of 13 Elizabeth, creating one of the greatest means of creditor protection – the proscription of fraudulent transfers.

So, a ruling came out in June that we in The Bankruptcy Cave have been dying to blog about (and not just so we can use the blog title above). Forgive the delay – heavy workloads and summer vacations often preclude timely blog posts. But this one is a doozy, better late than never on this blog post.

Two recent cases serve as reminders the devil is truly in the details.