The Court of Appeal has considered whether interim dividends paid to a shareholder at a time when the company did not have sufficient distributable reserves, making the payments unlawful, could later be reclassified as salary payments.
Facts
The Court of Appeal has given guidance on when the duty of directors to have regard to the interest of creditors arises. This is an important point, as the general statutory duty of a director to promote the success of the company for the benefit of the company's members is expressly subject to the rules on creditors' interests. The court's decision also considers whether a dividend payment can be challenged as a transaction at an undervalue under section 423 of the Insolvency Act 1986.
Facts
The EU Parliament adopted the Directive on future "Preventive Restructuring Frameworks", which creates the basis for uniform preventive restructuring across the European Union and will fundamentally change how companies deal with financial difficulties and restructuring.
Until now, the EU has suffered from a regulatory patchwork in this area with no regulations in some markets and sophisticated procedures in others. The new directive mitigates the dangers and risks posed by the former uneven regulatory landscape.
Delivering on the announcement in the Autumn Budget, HMRC issued its consultation "Protecting your taxes in insolvency" on 26 February 2019. The consultation proposes legislation that will give HMRC the elevated status to secondary preferential creditor in a company's insolvency. If this is implemented, HMRC will have priority to recover certain taxes from insolvent businesses ahead of other creditors from 6 April 2020.
Receivables financiers, lenders taking security assignments over contractual rights, participants in the secondary loan market and others have an interest in:
The EU Parliament adopted the Directive on future "Preventative Restructuring Frameworks.
This creates the basis for a uniform legal framework for preventive restructuring within Europe. To date there has been a "patchwork" of regulations in the EU: in some cases there are no regulations at all, in others there are sophisticated procedures in place. The new directive now counteracts the dangers and risks of such regulatory differences.
In a decision to be welcomed by ratepayers, the Court of Appeal in Rossendale Borough Council and others v. Hurstwood Properties (A) Limited and others [2019] EWCA Civ 364 has confirmed that certain types of mitigation schemes are not sufficient to pierce the corporate veil and transfer liability for business rates to the beneficiaries of those schemes.
Liability for business rates
A year after its collapse, Carillion's insolvency continues to haunt both its supply chain and the wider UK construction industry. Many of those left unpaid had spent months chasing Carillion for payment, all the while staving off payment demands from others. Overnight, their debts became unsecured. The flow of cash from Carillion that would have paid its supply chain dried up. A cascade of consequential insolvencies was inevitable.
Welche Stolpersteine drohen, wenn einige Arbeitnehmer noch nach der Betriebsstilllegung für Abwicklungsarbeiten benötigt werden, zeigt der Fall Air Berlin.
Als Air Berlin im November 2017 Insolvenz anmeldete, war das Schicksal der rund 6.000 Arbeitnehmer eine der in der Presse am meisten diskutierten Fragen. Bereits ein halbes Jahr später hatten etwa 3.000 von ihnen einen neuen Arbeitsplatz gefunden, die meisten bei anderen Fluggesellschaften. Hunderte andere wurden zunächst in Transfergesellschaften betreut.
Welle von Kündigungsschutzklagen
In the recent High Court judgment in VTB Bank (Public Joint Stock Company) v Anan Group (Singapore) Pte Ltd,(1) the plaintiff successfully obtained a winding-up order on a debtor company six weeks after the service of a statutory demand for an underlying debt of $250 million.