The European distressed market has been quiet this year. This is a function of ongoing government support, supportive sponsors and lenders, and a huge amount of liquidity in the market. Many companies which we and our clients identified as potential restructuring candidates have managed to complete successful refinancing transactions and have avoided the restructuring negotiation table.

In the context of debt recovery litigation, the obtaining of a decree (judgment) should not be an end in itself and this is particularly true in relation to volume debt recovery litigation. The purpose of a court decree is to enable the creditor obtain payment from his debtor of the sums of principal, interest and expenses (legal costs) due in terms of the decree.

CVAs continued to be a popular restructuring tool in 2021. As the retail industry gears up for what is expected to be a busy festive period, it marks the end of another year in which the close scrutiny and attempted challenge by landlords to retail CVAs continued.

What is a CVA?

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is the overarching name given to the different processes used to determine disputes between parties out with a formal court process. ADR is becoming more popular, but is not as widely used by insolvency practitioners (IPs) in the UK to resolve disputes arising from an insolvency event as it perhaps should be.

The most recent UK and Scotland-specific statistics seem to show that the low comparative levels of corporate insolvency that we have seen as a result of the COVID-19 temporary measures may be coming to an end.

The Accountant in Bankruptcy (AiB), the Scottish equivalent of the Insolvency Service, reports that the number of Scottish companies becoming insolvent or entering receivership increased by over 80% in the second quarter of 2021-22, with 211 companies becoming insolvent compared with 117 in the same quarter of 2020-21.

On October 20, 2021, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), and Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), and Independent senator Bernard Sanders (I-Vermont), introduced to the United States Senate proposed legislation S. 3022, the Stop Wall Street Looting Act of 2021 (the “SWSLA”),¹ as a reworked version of legislation previously proposed in 2019.

In what appears to be an attempt at wholesale reform of the private equity industry and bankruptcy practice, the SWSLA proposes to:

In a recent decision that will be of considerable interest to insolvency practitioners, the English High Court dismissed a challenge to a liquidator's decision to assign causes of action originally vested in an insolvent company to a specialist insolvency litigation financing company.

The latest insolvency statistics have now been released by the Insolvency Service and the Accountant in Bankruptcy ("AiB").

The AiB is responsible for the devolved elements of corporate insolvency, which is limited to liquidation and receivership. The Insolvency Service on the other hand records details on matters for which responsibility is retained at Westminster, being administration and CVAs.

Third-party, or nondebtor, releases have continued to attract attention from both commentators and legislators in the wake of recent cases such as Purdue Pharma LP, Boy Scouts of America and USA Gymnastics. Most recently, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Carolyn B.

COVID has tested the resilience of the construction industry over the past 18 months: temporary site closures; working restrictions; price increases and material shortages, to name but a few. Those challenges have brought cashflow pressures to bear. Is the next storm to be weathered that of solvency? It certainly seems ever more acute in these unprecedented times.