The District Court for the Southern District of New York in Lehman Brothers recently threw cold water on a growing body of cases that permit compensation of professional fees incurred by individual members of official committees of unsecured creditors.
As predicted, the court in Tokyo has ruled that Mt. Gox will be liquidated. An “Announcement of Commencement of Bankruptcy Proceedings” was posted overnight April 24 by the Japanese bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi on the Mt. Gox site to confirm that the company is officially in bankruptcy (liquidation) in Japan. The Announcement also includes a “Frequently Asked Questions” section to give a very high level overview of the liquidation process.
On April 16, Mt. Gox’s civil rehabilitation proceeding in Tokyo (something similar to a U.S. Chapter 11) was dismissed and the initial stages of a bankruptcy liquidation under Japanese law began. An Interim Administrator (Nobuaki Kobaysahi) has been named until the Japanese court decides whether the liquidation will begin and whether a different Administrator replaces the Interim Administrator. How this situation came to be is an interesting tale.
Bankruptcy trustees should clearly communicate to the bankrupt their intent to make a claim against the non-exempt equity in the bankrupt's property at the time of the assignment into bankruptcy, according to the recent decision of the British Columbia Supreme Court in Re Barter.1 A failure to communicate such an intent may result in the trustee being unable to realize the non-exempt equity or, as in Re Barter, the absolute discharge
Mt. Gox filed a motion requesting the U.S. Bankruptcy Court’s approval of the form of the official notification of the May 6 recognition hearing as well as approving the service via email. The motion also seeks to establish a deadline of seven days before that hearing for any party to object to the request for recognition of the Japanese insolvency case. Additional notice would be provided by posting an approved form of notification on the Mt. Gox web site as well as at the Reddit.com site.
Tuesday evening, the Plaintiffs in the Illinois Class Action litigation filed motions with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas asking that court to terminate the temporary stay it recently granted to Mt. Gox. They also asked that Robert Marie Mark Karpeles (the Foreign Representative for Mt. Gox) be ordered to provide testimony under oath in the United States regarding the Chapter 15 filing.
Introduction
In the recent decision of the Alberta Court of Appeal in Orion Industries Ltd. (Trustee of) v Neil's General Contracting Ltd.1("Orion Industries") the Court interpreted and applied the rule added as part of the 2009 amendments to section 95(2) of theBankruptcy and Insolvency Act ("BIA") which deals with preferential payments. That amendment provides that evidence of pressure by a creditor is inadmissible to support a preferential payment.
InRe Bock inc.1, a recent case decided under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act ("CCAA"), the Superior Court of Quebec made an order reviving a dealership agreement that was purported to be validly terminated by the manufacturer prior to the commencement of any insolvency proceedings.
On June 1, 2013, British Columbia's new Limitation Act (the "New Act")1 came into force, changing the limitation periods for filing civil lawsuits in British Columbia.