On Friday March 10, 2023, the Bank of England moved to put the UK arm of Silicon Valley Bank into insolvency after it applied for £1.8bn of liquidity as its parent company was collapsing. The situation remains fluid, and the following Q&A reflects our understanding as of Sunday, March 12.
UK resolution authority and powers
On March 10, 2023, the Bank of England published the following statement regarding Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited (SVB UK):
The U.K. government has published its much-anticipated proposals for regulating the cryptoasset industry. These proposals, currently in the form of a consultation, will see many (but not all) cryptoasset-related activities being brought within the regulatory perimeter for financial services in the U.K.
European leveraged finance markets paused for breath in 2022, due to rising interest rates, volatile geopolitics and a tightening of financial markets across the board—but what can we expect in 2023?
Overall leveraged finance activity in Spain declined in 2022, driven primarily by a severe drop in high yield bond issuance—as was the case in virtually all markets. Having weathered the worst of COVID-19, many companies had already taken steps to bring their debt under control. However, the new year brought with it new challenges, from rising inflation to events in Ukraine.
On October 12, the Honorable Robert D. Drain, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Southern District of New York, issued his final decision from the bench in the bankruptcy cases of supermarket chain Tops Holdings II Corporation (“Tops”). The decision came in an adversary proceeding seeking to avoid four dividend payments totaling $375 million from 2009–2013 paid to the Tops’ private equity investors (the “PE Group”) as constructive and actual fraudulent transfers and also hold the director-defendants responsible for breaching their fiduciary duties.
Last month, Judge Caproni of the Southern District of New York issued a ruling stating that if a commercial lease does not require a landlord to hold a security deposit in trust and if there is no state statute generally requiring landlords to do so, the security deposit may not be recoverable by the tenant when the landlord files for bankruptcy. See 10FN Inc. v. Cerberus Business Finance LLC, 21-5996 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 18, 2022).
In recent years, Indonesian companies have shown both a greater willingness to use foreign restructuring processes, as well as a greater need to do so given the increasingly sophisticated financing structures and investor bases seen for Indonesian businesses. Some of the notable Chapter 15 protection cases include those involving the Duniatex Group in 2020, PT Bakrie Telecom Tbk in 2018, PT Bumi Resources Tbk in 2017, and Berau Capital Resources Pte Ltd (a Singapore SPV of PT Berau Coal Energy Tbk) in 2015.
Over the past decade there has been an influx of small- and medium-sized entrants to the U.K. gas supplier market, which is supervised by Great Britain's[1] independent energy regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem).[2] According to Ofgem, this market development had the effect of increasing price competition and putting pressure on incumbent suppliers to improve customer service for consumers.[3]
Rises in energy costs, disruption to global supply chains, the situation in Ukraine, soaring inflation and higher interest rates are pushing several major European economies towards recession. Borrowers and issuers in the leveraged loan and high yield markets are feeling the impact and the benign refinancing conditions of 2021 are long gone. The natural consequence is rising default rates – S&P's global corporate default count for 2022 surpassed 2021's year-to-date tally during September.
On 12 January 2019, the Italian Government enacted Legislative Decree No. 14 (so called "business crisis and insolvency code (codice della crisi d’impresa e dell’insolvenza)", which entered into force on 15 July 2022 (the "Insolvency Code").
The Insolvency Code provides for, inter alia, the following: