Introduction

There are two principal mechanisms for the dissolution of a solvent Irish company:

• Voluntary Strike-Off (VSO); and
• Members' Voluntary Liquidation (MVL).

To the extent there are other Irish or EU entities in the group, it may also be possible to dissolve the company by way of merger with another group entity.

Amendment to Bankruptcy Rule 3002

Certain amendments to the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure (the “Bankruptcy Rules”) will become effective in all cases commencing after December 1, 2017.1

The amendment to Bankruptcy Rule 3002 is significant. As explained in detail below, the amendment does the following:

The Bankruptcy Code gives secured creditors certain rights and protections. For secured creditors whose collateral is worth more than the creditor’s claim, these rights may include payment of attorney’s fees and post-petition interest at a rate agreed to in the debtor’s and creditor’s prepetition agreement. A chapter 11 bankruptcy plan, however, may have provisions in it that expressly takes away a secured creditor’s right to post-petition interest.

In Reilly & Personal Insolvency Acts 2012-2015 [2017] IEHC 558, Baker J, 5 October, 2017, the High Court held that applications to Court under Section 115A of the Personal Insolvency Acts 2012-2015 (the Acts), for approval of a Personal Insolvency Arrangement (PIA) despite its rejection by creditors, must be made by a Personal Insolvency Practitioner (PIP) and not by the Debtor themselves.

Creditors lacking liens to secure their claim can fare poorly in a bankruptcy case. The “absolute priority rule” is a bedrock principle of bankruptcy law and provides that a creditor at a particular rung of the claim priority hierarchy must be paid in full before any money flows down to junior creditors. Secured creditors reside near the top of the hierarchy, followed by administrative expense claimants, priority claimants and general unsecured creditors.

A recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has fanned the smoldering dispute among courts regarding the scope of asset sales in bankruptcy. In the In re Spanish Peaks Holdings II, LLC decision, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court’s holding that sale of commercial real estate can, in certain circumstances, be free and clear of all liens, claims, encumbrances, and interests, including a leasehold interest. In other words, a tenant of a bankrupt landlord could find itself with no interest in the property following the sale.

On June 25, 2017, Takata’s US arm, TK Holdings Inc.

Baker J in the High Court has given three recent judgments in matters concerning Section 115A(9) of the Personal Insolvency Acts 2012 – 2015 (the Acts). This Section gives a Court power to review and approve a Personal Insolvency Application (PIA) rejected at a meeting of creditors.

Re JD (a debtor) [2017] IEHC 119, High Court, 21 February 2017

Predictions that retailers would increasingly find themselves filing bankruptcy, whether for the first or second time, are proving true mid-year. See January 2017 Alix Partners Survey at p. 2.

In a High Court decision of 22 May 2017 Baker J rejected a proposal by a secured lender to write down a portion of a debtor couple's mortgage debt and warehouse half of the debt as future repayment of the warehoused part of the loan was not predicated on an ability to repay. Thus, the proposal was capable of creating circumstances amounting to insolvency at the end of the mortgage term in approximately 23 years.

Facts