What does the Autumn Statement mean for business?
2022 has been a bumper year for fiscal statements, with three separate Chancellors’ taking to the despatch box – each with very different approaches.
How to adapt to shifting legislation on insolvency fraud
A total of more than £73 billion was provided to 1.6 million firms via the government’s support schemes, with the majority going to ‘micro businesses’ with nine employees or less.
The costs regime in insolvency litigation is outdated and not fit for purpose, especially when it comes to the clawback claims designed to allow officeholders to restore the insolvent estate when assets have been deliberately dissipated. Many such claims can become uneconomical to run, especially where recipients of dissipated assets have no desire to preserve them but every incentive to diminish them with their own costs. Often a sale or assignment is the last resort to seek justice against wrongdoers in such situations.
After 10 sanctioned Restructuring Plans (and one declined) it is evident that valuation is key to supporting the court’s decision making process and a focal point for potential challenge.
Contradicting the popular opinion that inflation is an issue that’s set to stick around for a while yet, an article in the Times this weekend put forward an interesting opposing view - that inflation has already peaked and is likely to be on the way down.
Those of us in the restructuring community are all too aware of the “ripple-out” effect caused by the financial deterioration and failures of multi-national companies on the wider supply chain and customers in general.
There has been much commentary recently on the treatment by lenders of individuals and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Indeed, the FCA has made its expectations very clear – that lenders should fully support those experiencing financial difficulty.
As a restructuring professional and insolvency practitioner, and a former regulator, I have some competing views and thoughts on what this means and whether it is the optimum approach in the longer term.
In 1907, Robert Baden-Powell, an English soldier, devised the Scout motto: Be Prepared. Upon hearing the Scout motto, someone asked Baden-Powell the inevitable follow-up question.
“Prepared for what?”
“Why, for any old thing,” he replied.
In Scouting for Boys (published in 1908), Baden-Powell wrote that to ‘Be Prepared’ means “you are always in a state of readiness in mind and body to do your duty.” More than a century later, preparedness is still a cornerstone of Scouting.
Another interesting summary in the Times reporting on the staggering levels of fraud committed against the UK taxpayer during the pandemic. Whilst the Insolvency Service are clearly doing their best to hold fraudsters to account through disqualification orders and similar punitive measures, it appears that we are no closer to a financial recovery of any meaningful value, or at the very least imposing real financial pain on those who took advantage of the country’s generosity in the face of the unprecedented challenges of the Covid pandemic.