Executive Summary
The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has established March 31, 2016, as the Claims Bar Date in the Reliance Insurance Company Liquidation. Policyholders and claimants may think that if they file a claim on March 31, 2016, the claim will be deemed timely filed. They would be wrong.
March 30 Is the Key Date
On 12 February 2016, the German Financial Supervisory Authority (Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht, orBaFin) declared Maple Bank GmbH (“Maple”) as an indemnification case, meaning that the German deposit insurance institutions can compensate the bank’s creditors.
BaFin had previously filed an insolvency petition against Maple, and the insolvency court in Frankfurt am Main opened insolvency proceedings on 11 February 2016. It appointed an insolvency administrator who is now responsible for managing Maple’s affairs.
Finance Bill 2016 includes provisions designed to prevent taxpayers converting profits generated in a company into a capital receipt in the hands of the shareholder(s). Taxpayers may want to consider winding-up their companies or making substantial dividend distributions ahead of 6 April 2016 as a result of these measures and the changes to the taxation of dividends.
Broadly, the intention is that a capital distribution made in the winding-up of a company will be taxed as income if:
From 1 January 2016, European Economic Area (EEA) member states are required to implement Article 55 of the European Union Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (2014/59) (BRRD).
As reported in Reed Smith’s March 2015 client alert, insolvency practitioners currently enjoy an exemption from the provisions of Part 2 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO).
Summary
The Insurance Commissioner of Pennsylvania has placed Lincoln General Insurance Company into liquidation in Pennsylvania. As a result, the Insurance Commissioner as Liquidator takes over the property, business, and affairs of Lincoln General; collects assets; resolves claims; and ultimately, distributes assets to creditors, including policyholders and claimants.
The Insolvency (Amendment) Rules 2015 (the “2015 Rules”) came into force on 1 October 2015. They amended the 1986 Insolvency Rules to introduce a new approach to the approval and payment of insolvency office holders (“IOH”s)’ fees and disbursements.
In a September 18, 2015 order, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York affirmed a bankruptcy court order denying administrative claim treatment to Hudson Energy Services, LLC (“Hudson”) for its retail sales of electricity to the debtor.1 The decision does not address any “safe-harbor” or forward contract issues, but is among a number of decisions providing for inconsistent treatment of such sales.
In a recent decision related to the SemCrude bankruptcy, the federal district court upheld the Bankruptcy Court’s rulings on the efficacy of certain common risk-mitigation tools used in the energy trading and marketing business – namely product payment netting and cross-product setup upon liquidation and closeout. The decision comes amid long-running challenges from producers who had sold product to the SemGroup entities on credit.