A new Act, which received Royal Assent on 15 December 2021, extends the existing directors’ disqualification regime to the directors of dissolved companies.
In August 2021, Sir Alistair Norris sanctioned the restructuring plan of Amicus Finance PLC (Amicus) (as we wrote about at the time). On 15 November 2021, the judge handed down his reasoning for sanctioning the plan.
Background
On 18 October 2021, the EU Commission published the sixth amendment to its Temporary Framework for State aid measures to support the economy in the COVID-19 outbreak (the Temporary Framework) adopted on 19 March 2020 (see our blog post).
The UK's latest quarterly company insolvency statistics, published on 29 October, suggest that the unexpectedly calm seas seen over the last 18 months (and maintained by unprecedented government economic support) may be starting to give way to stormier waters as corporate insolvencies begin to return to pre-pandemic levels.
Before 1st October 2021, French law did not provide for the possibility to cram down shareholders, other than under Article L. 631-19-2 of the French Commercial Code, which sets conditions which are so stringent that it is not used in practice.
Directive 2019/2023 has let EU member states decide whether shareholders should be a class of “affected parties” subject to cross-class cram down or whether other measures should be implemented to avoid shareholders preventing, or making it difficult, in an unreasonable manner, the approval of a restructuring plan.
The High Court has rejected a landlord's challenge to the Caffè Nero CVA, giving support to the ongoing usefulness of CVAs in high street restructurings. The case raised issues around the use of the electronic decision procedure set out in the Insolvency Rules for CVAs, nominee and director decision-making during the CVA process, CVA modifications and provision of information to CVA creditors.
Background
As part of the overall scaling down of the COVID-19 support provided to UK businesses, the UK government has announced changes to the regime for winding-up petitions, with effect from 1 October – withdrawing, at least in part, some of the protections currently afforded to businesses.
Current position
Since the global financial crisis, the Middle East restructuring and insolvency market has come a long way. Having sought to reduce their economies' dependency on oil revenues and become more attractive to international investors, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) in particular have significantly developed the restructuring and insolvency toolbox available to creditors and debtors alike.
Following its approval on 5th August 2021 by the Council of Ministers, the Law-Decree n. 118 was published on 24th August into the G.U. n. 202 about the topic of "Urgent measures in the field of business crises and business reorganisation, as well as further urgent measures in the field of justice".
Firstly, the Law-Decree postpones the entry into force of the Italian Crisis Code until 16th May 2022 (Art. 1, letter a), further postponing to 31 December 2023 the “crisis alert related procedures” introduced by Article 12 of the Crisis Code.
A seguito dell’approvazione avvenuta il 5 agosto 2021 da parte del Consiglio dei ministri, è stato pubblicato il 24 agosto in G.U. n 202 il Decreto-legge n. 118 in tema di “Misure urgenti in materia di crisi d’impresa e di risanamento aziendale, nonché ulteriori misure urgenti in materia di giustizia”.
Il Decreto in primo luogo differisce l’entrata in vigore del Codice della Crisi al 16 maggio 2022 (art. 1, lett. a), posticipando ulteriormente al 31 dicembre 2023 le procedure di allerta della crisi introdotte dall'art. 12 CCI.