On 1 October 2015 the minimum debt upon which a creditors' bankruptcy petition can be presented increased from £750 to £5000 and the threshold for serving a statutory demand on an individual debtor (as a precursor to bankruptcy) also increased to £5000. 

On 7 October 2015, the Financial Conduct Authority launched a ‘Call for Inputs’ on competition in the mortgage sector. The Call for Inputs provides an opportunity for interested parties to help the FCA identify potential areas where competition may not be working well and could be improved.

Key Points:

Complex cross-border issues can be dealt with relatively easily under the Cross-Border Insolvency Act as long as flexibility is built into the relevant orders.

Key Points:

You can lead a director to the safe harbour, but you can't make him drink.

The Government's new approach to insolvency is long on rhetoric about risk taking and the need to remove the stigma of business failure.

However, it is short on detailed consideration of exactly why we have legal rules for corporate and personal insolvency.

Those rules aim to balance the interests of creditors against the need to encourage business start-ups.

The Australian Government has accepted certain recommendations of the Productivity Commission's long-awaited Report on Business Set-up, Transfer and Closure, in an attempt to change the focus of Australia's insolvency laws from "penalising and stigmatising business failure”, according to the Minister for Small Business and Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Kelly O'Dwyer MP.

It has expressed a willingness to legislate to introduce at least two main changes:

Key Points:

It's unclear that safe harbours by themselves will provide genuine opportunities for restructuring distressed businesses.

The Productivity Commission's upcoming report on corporate insolvency will address two burning issues: ipso facto clauses and how to encourage directors to save financially-stressed companies.

October 2016 will see the Third Parties (Rights against Insurers) Act 2010 finally brought into force. Although five years since it passed through Parliament, the act has never received Royal Assent due to a number of practical hurdles.

The Insolvency Service published its quarterly statistics on company insolvency and individual procedures showing:

According to recent press reports, Dave Forsey, Chief Executive of Sports Direct, is the latest (and most high-profile) executive to be hit by court proceedings concerning alleged failure to comply with redundancy notification procedures - in his case in his former position at fashion retailer, USC. As these and other reports confirm, there is clear evidence that the Insolvency Service is increasingly proactive in pursuing organisations, their senior personnel and insolvency practitioners who fail to file the requisite redundancy notification form (HR1) on time.

With the first PPF levy invoices based on the new Experian insolvency-risk assessment model starting to land on trustees’ door-mats, many schemes have made the unwelcome discovery that their PPF levy for 2015-16 has suffered a substantial hike. Around 200 schemes are reported to have seen levy rises in excess of £200,000.