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):
In an increasing number of restructuring cases of globally-operating companies, companies or funds outside Japan are becoming strong sponsor candidates, and even more foreign players are expected to be actively selected as sponsor candidates in the future.
In this article, we focus on the sponsor selection process in out-of-court restructurings and legal insolvency procedures in Japan, based on recent actual cases.
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.
FTX Trading Ltd. ("FTX") and its affiliates (collectively, "FTX Group"), which operated one of the largest crypto-asset exchanges in the world through the FTX.com platform, filed for Chapter 11 in the United States on November 11 last year.
The high-profile Chapter 11 case of the FTX Trading group involves its Japanese affiliates including FTX Japan, which operated a registered cryptocurrency exchange in Japan and has been ordered by the Financial Services Agency of Japan to suspend its business upon the filing for Chapter 11. Recently, a motion was made for entry of orders approving, among other things, the group to sell FTX Japan's business through so-called “363 sale”.
Restructuring & Insolvency Newsletter
December 2022 (Vol.1)
The first case in Japanese history where the debtor used simplified rehabilitation proceedings as a tool to "cram down"
minority lenders
I. Introduction II. Overview of the procedures used
- Turnaround ADR and simplified rehabilitation proceedings
III. Marelli case IV. Expected future developments
Mori Hamada & Matsumoto
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.
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: