Kookmin Bank v Rainy Sky

We have received a number of urgent enquiries about the outcome of the Kookmin Bank case, which was recently decided by the Court of Appeal, in London. The judgment was issued at the end of May 2010 and held, in effect, that refund guarantees -- relating to advance payments of about US$46 million -- were unenforceable by the Buyers to whom the guarantees had been issued. Given the importance of refund guarantees to our shipping and banking clients, we are issuing this summary of the judgment and its general significance.

Summary

The briefing provides an overview of the reorganisation plan introduced by the new Greek Bankruptcy Code. Its purpose is to set out the more important mechanics of the reorganisation plan and examine its more important ramifications within the bankruptcy process.

The new Greek Bankruptcy Code

The case of Poulton v Ministry of Justice was decided by the Court of Appeal at the end of last month. The Court decided that a trustee in bankruptcy was left without a remedy against the Court Service when a bankrupt's estate suffered loss following an oversight by the Court Service to notify the Land Registry that a bankruptcy petition had been presented (as it is required to do by rule 6.13 of the Insolvency Rules 1986).

The background

The European Commission has published a paper on its study covering pre-insolvency, early intervention, reorganisation and liquidation.

In Griffi n v UHY Hacker Young & Partners1 the court dismissed an application for summary judgment on the basis of the ex turpi causa (or illegality) defence, and made a number of observations as to uncertainties in the law as it stands.

In the present fi nancial climate, customers are increasingly asking for business critical software or other assets to be transferred to the customer should the supplier become insolvent, for the legitimate reason that the customer needs security of supply. Two recent Court of Appeal cases remind us that customers who outsource to and contract with potentially vulnerable service providers need to take account of the “anti-deprivation principle” when doing this.

On 25 March 2010, HM Treasury published a consultation paper which proposes improvements to the protection and payment of benefits for policyholders of insurers in financial difficulty. In particular, the proposals address certain gaps in the regime for insurers in administration in contrast to the regime applied in liquidation.

The Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010 received Royal Assent on 25 March 2010. The Act modernises the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 1930 by streamlining the procedure by which a third party claimant can recover compensation from the insurer of a defendant.

On 12 March 2010, the FSA published the statement that it had provided to the court appointed examiner of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc, which is referred to in his wider report on the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

View FSA statement to the US bankruptcy court examiner on the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, 12 March 2010

The FSA has published the statement that it has provided to the court appointed examiner of Lehman Brothers Holding Inc, which is referred to in his wider report on the collapse of Lehman Brothers published on 11 March 2010.

View FSA statement to the US bankruptcy court examiner on the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, 12 March 2010