Although not directly concerned with directors' liabilities, the recent Supreme Court judgment in Stanford International Bank Ltd v HSBC Bank PLC provides further clarity on the circumstances in which a distressed or insolvent company may seek to make claims against its directors.

INTRODUCTION

The key aspects affecting directors' liabilities presented in the Supreme Court ruling are that:

The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit wasted no time getting the new year off to a roaring start through its ruling in In re LTL Mgmt., LLC, Case No. 22-2003, 2023 WL 1098189 (3d Cir. Jan. 30, 2023). In LTL, the Third Circuit affirmatively dismissed the so-called “Texas Two-Step” by which a solvent corporation had tried to cabin potentially billions of dollars of mass tort liability through an internal corporate restructuring.

In that ruling, the Third Circuit determined that:

As 2023 gets underway, we've taken the opportunity here to look at what we saw in the European distressed market in 2022, as well as looking ahead to what we expect to see in the months to come.

THE EUROPEAN DISTRESSED MARKET STEADILY PICKED UP IN 2022,

As we start the new year, we take a look back at some of our highlights from 2022, and offer our view for 2023.

There has been no shortage of high-profile insolvencies in the crypto market in recent months across a range of market participants and geographies. These include the US Chapter 11 and Bahamas provisional liquidation of FTX as well as the US Chapter 11 filings of BlockFi, Singapore-based crypto hedge fund ThreeArrows Capital, US-based lenders Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, US-based crypto mining data centre Compute North and German crypto bank Nuri.

In the context of a trade finance dispute, the High Court has considered the contractual interpretation of an irrevocable letter of credit incorporating the commonly used code in the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits 600 (UCP 600), published by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). In particular, the court held that the issuer’s interpretation of the letter of credit would, in practice, render the instrument revocable, which was inconsistent with the UCP and therefore not the proper construction.

The landscape of digital assets, blockchain and related technologies is constantly evolving. Each quarter, Ropes & Gray attorneys analyze government enforcement and private litigation actions, rulings, settlements, and other key developments in this space. We distill the flood of industry headlines so that you can identify and manage risk more effectively.

Chief Justice Hammerschlag, sitting in the New South Wales Supreme Court (the Court), has delivered a judgement of importance to secured creditor and insolvency practitioners alike in Volkswagen Financial Services Australia Pty Ltd v Atlas CTL Pty Ltd (Recs and Mngrs Apptd) (In liq) [2022] NSWSC 573 (Atlas).

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (the Committee) has commenced an inquiry into the “effectiveness of Australia’s corporate insolvency laws in protecting and maximising value for the benefit of all interested parties and the economy”.^[1]