The Renin Group of companies has been granted protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, "to preserve the company as a viable operation and preserve 300 jobs" Ontario Superior Court Justice Mesbur noted in her endorsement of its application for “immediate relief.”

The Renin Group is the parent corporation of Renin Corp., Renin Corp. US and Kingstar Products (Western Inc.) based in Brampton, Ontario. All three companies are named in the court’s order.

An English rugby club (an unincorporated association of its members) engaged the services of Barnes Webster & Sons (BWS), a construction company. The club’s treasurer signed the contract, which was witnessed by Davies, the club’s president. The club agreed to pay BWS a fixed price plus additional amounts for certain variations in the work, should they arise. The variations were required, but the club did not pay the £147,000 bill for them that BWS presented. BWS made a demand on Davies personally, which he moved to set aside.

The District Court in Manhattan seems to have put the nail in the coffin of triangular set-off in insolvency – that is, the ability of affiliates to set off their claims against an insolvent debtor: In re Lehman Brothers Inc. (SDNY, 4 October 2011).

Oilsands Quest Inc. (AMEX: BQI) has been granted protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act until December 21,2011, allowing the insolvent company to continue operating normally as it attempts to reorganize its financial affairs.

“We made the difficult decision to seek creditor protection because we believe this step to be in the best interest of all our stakeholders,” Garth Wong, Chief Executive Officer of Oilsands Quest, said in a news release.

Call it a sign of the times: the past decade has produced the ten largest bankruptcies in the United States.

Based on disclosed assets in its recent bankruptcy filing, MF Global has taken the spot just ahead of Chrysler as the eighth-largest United States bankruptcy (as ranked by New Generation Research on the basis of pre-petition assets).

The Top Ten list¹ is presented below, with a brief commentary on the circumstances of bankruptcies, each of which has significantly impacted the United States and global economies.

Norgate Metals, a Québec-based company specializing in the engineering, manufacturing and installation of steel-based metal products, has received court protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act to continue operations and develop a restructuring plan.

What happens when Canadian entities are part of a corporate group with international operations that seeks to restructure? A recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Re Massachusetts Elephant & Castle Group, Inc. provides guidance on how Canadian courts will consider recognition of foreign restructuring proceedings.

The Canadian Investor Protection Fund, the investment industry’s customer compensation agency, has obtained a bankruptcy order in the Ontario Superior Court against MF Global Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of MF Global Holdings which sought Chapter 11 protection in New York last week. KPMG Inc. has been appointed as trustee in bankruptcy for MF Global Canada.

The Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada, whose dealer members support the CIPF, had previously obtained an order requiring MF Global Canada to cease dealings with the public.

Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon, owners of the New York Mets baseball team, invested in Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Irving Picard, the trustee appointed under the Securities Investor Protection Act to liquidate the business of Madoff and Madoff Securities, sought to recover over $1 billion from Katz and Wilpon on the grounds that they had made money from Madoff through fraud, constructive fraud and preferential transfers in violation of federal bankruptcy law and New York debtor-creditor law.

In 2002 a European subsidiary of Lehman Brothers created a complicated synthetic debt structure called Dante, which was intended to provide credit insurance for another subsidiary, LBSF, against credit events affecting certain reference entities, the obligations of which formed the reference portfolio. A special purpose vehicle issued notes to investors, the proceeds of which were used to purchase collateral which vested in a trust. The issuer entered into a swap with LBSF under which LBSF received the income on the collateral and paid the issuer the amount of interest due to noteholders.