On January 14, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court decided City of Chicago, Illinois v. Fulton (Case No. 19-357, Jan. 14, 2021), a case which examined whether merely retaining estate property after a bankruptcy filing violates the automatic stay provided for by §362(a) of the Bankruptcy Code. The Court overruled the bankruptcy court and U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in deciding that mere retention of property does not violate the automatic stay.

Case Background

Externally-administered companies will have 24 months to comply with financial reporting and AGM obligations, if ASIC's proposal goes ahead.

ASIC relief defers obligations to lodge financial reports and hold annual general meetings for companies in external administration by 6 months. Companies in liquidation (other than AFS licensees) do not have to comply with financial reporting or AGM obligations at all.

When an individual files a Chapter 7 bankruptcy case, the debtor’s non-exempt assets become property of the estate that is used to pay creditors. “Property of the estate” is a defined term under the Bankruptcy Code, so a disputed question in many cases is: What assets are, in fact, available to creditors?

Companies post-restructuring are not subject to the rules protecting creditors of insolvent companies in section 588FL of the Corporations Act 2001.

Changes in Farm and Agriculture Bankruptcy

In 2019, the Small Business Reorganization Act (SBRA) and the Family Farmer Relief Act (FFRA) were passed to help American farmers who have seen an increase in financial difficulties. Recently, farms have seen a rise in debt due to market disruptions, poor weather, and lower income. The SBRA and the FFRA were passed in order to increase the ease and accessibility of Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 bankruptcies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created financial distress across many sectors of the economy. As a result, there is a good chance that your business has, or soon will, be forced to deal with a customer bankruptcy. When your customer files for bankruptcy, all is not necessarily lost. The strategic actions you take, in consultation with an experienced attorney, before and during a bankruptcy can help improve your odds of recovery.

There remain a number of issues in the proposed insolvency reforms that need careful deliberation, particularly where the Regulations have yet to be released for consideration.

The new debtor-in-possession model for small business restructuring is aimed at allowing viable small businesses to seize the initiative to quickly restructure to survive the economic impact of COVID-19, but we need greater clarity on key elements of the proposed insolvency framework.

Liquidators need to be mindful that a disclaimer of property may be challenged. The Supreme Court of Victoria underscored a key issue in establishing "prejudice" to creditors in a liquidation, holding that a disclaimer of property may be set aside where the liquidators are indemnified.

Residential aged care has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons, with headlines due to the particularly heavy impact of COVID-19 on this sector, the interim findings of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and the alarming declaration by Leading Age Services Australia that a pre-COVID-19 accounting review indicating that almost 200 nursing homes housing some 50,000 people were operating at an unacceptably high risk of insolvency – a finding supported by the recently released report by the Aged Care Financing Authority (ACFA) which found “near