Those thinking that the trials and tribulations of the recession may have passed them by and that, if all else failed, at least the pension was safe, may have to think again following two recent court decisions in which pensions came under attack from creditors and trustees in bankruptcy.
The vexed question of whether a future right to receive a pension can be attached to satisfy a judgment, or can be claimed by a trustee in bankruptcy, has long since troubled the courts.
An administrator who was sued in relation to contractual liabilities which he entered as administrator of a company was found to have no personal liability for those contracts or for the costs of the litigation.
In the recent case of Wright Hassall LLP v Morris1 the claimant advanced various arguments in an attempt to make the administrator personally liable for a costs order in litigation where the defendant companies were unable to pay. These arguments were rejected.
Of all the headlines related to Rangers’ current financial plight one related to the world of sales finance is probably a surprise. However, Rangers’ administrators recently sought the opinion of the Court of Session on the club’s well publicised deal with Ticketus, under which Rangers sold to Ticketus rights to future season ticket sales. Although the Ticketus deal is not, strictly, an invoice financing Lord Hodge’s opinion touches on several questions directly relevant to sales finance.
The Scottish Government launched a consultation on the question of the reform of Scotland’s bankruptcy law earlier this year, and a lengthy and detailed consultation paper was released. Those of us who have heard the Accountant in Bankruptcy speak at conferences and the like over recent months eagerly awaited a discussion document which would reflect her guarded admission that things had perhaps swung rather too far in favour of debtors, and the time was right to try to redress that balance by looking towards the impact of debt on creditors.
This blog is supposed to be about real estate, mostly commercial real estate. So when one of my Celtic-supporting partners who has been watching avidly every twist and turn of the Rangers saga said I should read the latest court judgement and what it said about property law, I was a little surprised. But there is quite a lot that is relevant to what we do on a day to day basis.
The High Court has held that where litigation is commenced against the administrator of a company, arising out of contractual obligations entered into in that capacity, he or she will not be personally liable, despite the insolvent company being unable to meet the resulting liability.(1)
The courts and FOS are now headed down very different paths in their approach to credit crunch losses suffered by clients of regulated firms. While FOS has all but abandoned the general law of causation in its approach to cases of consumer detriment, we have observed how the courts have held again and again that the general law of causation applies to mis-selling claims.
The Supreme Court yesterday ruled that client money held in un-segregated accounts should be treated the same as client money held in segregated accounts, enabling un-segregated account holders to share in the client money pool on the insolvency of a firm with whom the account is held.
In an earlier blog I touched upon the belief which exists within certain parts of the market that there is still a way to go in the re-pricing of non-prime assets. Some commentators are predicting that this re-pricing will take place through 2012 and into 2013, the hope being that we will start to see greater activity in the secondary market in the second half of next year.