Employees who transfer to a new employer from a business that is under insolvency proceedings may be able to recover unpaid wages and other debts from the Secretary of State.
However, BIS v Dobrucki has confirmed that the Secretary of State will only pick up the liabilities of the old employer (the transferor). It will not be responsible for liabilities that are incurred after the transfer has taken place; that is, any liability of the new employer (the transferee).
The background
The 18 March saw George Osborne’s budget speech, heralded by Mr Osborne announcing that “Britain is walking tall again” and promising to “use whatever additional resources we have to get the deficit and the debt falling”. We examine what the drivers behind the hyperbole might mean for the insolvency community.
Further austerity as the key theme
This quarter has seen a wave of legislative and regulatory reform on the way. We review some of the more significant developments.
Insolvency exemption to the Jackson reforms extended indefinitely
The Spanish Insolvency Act has been reformed several times recently to solve technical problems and to facilitate the continuity of economically or operationally viable companies. In the final quarter of 2014 alone, two partial reforms of the act were approved.
Royal Decree-Law 11/2014, of September 5, on urgent measures in insolvency matters
On March 7, 2014, the State Council released its Opinion on Further Optimizing the Market Environment for Corporate Merger and Restructuring (Guo Fa [2014] No. 14, “Circular 14”), to improve the institutional mechanisms and policies that encourage corporate mergers and restructuring. Circular 14 gives overall guidance on special treatments for merger and corporate restructuring transactions with regard to enterprise income tax (“EIT”), land value-added tax, value-added tax and business tax.
The Supreme Court confirmed the lower-court judgments that had rescinded the payments made to the managing director through remuneration, as the bylaw requisite to create the right to receive it had not been met, as well as payments made to shareholders through dividends, differentiating between the resolution of the meeting to distribute dividends and the payment of these dividends.
At the end of October 2014, as insolvency administrators of Establiments Miró, we carried out the sale of the insolvent company’s production unit to the Swiss fund Springwater Capital LLC.
This transaction was successful, resulting in maintaining 476 jobs, preserving 67 stores, and bringing income of €4,505,937 for the insolvency (€3,000,000 for the price and €1,505,937 for recovering the amount of the bonds to be substituted by the purchaser).
The Supreme Court repeated its criterion on classifying as insolvency claims any leasing installments arising after the declaration of insolvency, and interpreted the amendment introduced into article 61.2 of the Insolvency Act (“IA”) by the 2011 reform.
Decision of the Supreme Court of Justice, No 117-B/1999.P1.S1., of 2015-01-08 Transforming companies – Partner – Resignation – Liquidation of the company – Judicial ruling – Feasibility – Decision
In this decision, the Supreme Court of Justice (“STJ”) was asked to give ruling on the feasibility of the decision that was presented as an enforceable title, which was delivered within a special procedure of liquidation of an equity interest presented by a creditor partner against a debtor company.
The Madrid Senior Commercial Judges have published the conclusions of the meetings held on November 7 and 21 on the unification of applicable criteria of the reforms of the Insolvency Act enacted by Royal Decree-Law 11/201415 and Act 17/2014.16