As we pointed out in our Legal Update of 30 January 2014 ("New Companies Ordinance – Old Winding Up and Insolvency Regime"), the new Companies Ordinance for Hong Kong (Chapter 622) is scheduled to take effect from 3 March 2014 but it will not cover the winding-up and insolvency regime.
Did you know that in the recent matter of Chan Kam Cheung v. Sun Light Elastic Ltd & Another1 the petitioner's alternative remedy for winding-up was struck out by the court?
The existing provisions on the winding up of companies in Hong Kong will continue to operate after the new Companies Ordinance comes into effect, which is expected to be on 3 March 2014.
The new Companies Ordinance is an overhaul covering many aspects of the existing Companies Ordinance, including the following:
On 7 January 2014 the Financial Services and Treasury Bureau of the Hong Kong Government (FSTB), in conjunction with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the Insurance Authority (IA), issued a first stage consultation regarding the introduction of a resolution regime for financial institutions in Hong Kong (the “Consultation”). The Consultation initiates a discussion as to the regulatory structure and principles that would be required to establish an effective resolution regime for financial institutions in Hong Kong.
Recent heeft het Hof van Cassatie de deur iets wijder opengezet voor schuldeisers van een failliete vennootschap om, hangende het faillissement, een individuele vordering in te stellen tegen de bestuurders van de gefailleerde (Cass. 5 september 2013, A.R. nr. C.12.0445.N,www.juridat.be). Concreet mocht de fiscus de niet-betaalde bedrijfsvoorheffing, die opgenomen was in het passief van het faillissement, de facto integraal verhalen op de bestuurders, op grond van foutaansprakelijkheid.
On 9 July 2013 a new law amending the Code of Commerce was enacted in Luxembourg (the “Law”). The Law introduces the right for a depositor to claim the recovery of intangible and non-fungible (i.e., identifiable and separable) goods from a bankrupt company. The parliamentary file aims clearly at including data from a bankrupt cloud computing service provider. The Law sets forth the different conditions to be fulfilled for the entitlement to claim intangible and non-fungible goods from a bankrupt company:
After a company has been declared bankrupt, the liquidator in charge of the bankrupt estate will process personal data on that bankrupt company’s behalf. The liquidator would then be considered a so-called data controller within the meaning of the Dutch Data Protection Act (DDPA).
A Dutch Court of Appeal recently upheld a lower court’s decision that a liquidator has the right to access data concerning the administration of a bankrupt company, the data of which are kept by a third party. It also held that this right, however, does not imply that the third party must provide the data in an orderly manner without being adequately compensated for it.
In a recent case before the Court of Appeal in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the question was raised whether a liquidator should get access to data stored in a cloud, when the company, having a contractual relationship with the cloud provider, has gone into bankruptcy.