2022 has been a challenging year. In addition to the continuing impact of COVID-19 and the recent relaxation measures in China, the war in Ukraine has also brought impacts on society, politics and businesses.

On 9 November 2020, the PRC Supreme People's Court ("SPC") promulgated the Interpretations Applicable to Security-related Parts of the Civil Code of the People's Republic of China (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft") for public comments by 27 November 2020. This is the first interpretations issued by the SPC to the public for comments after the PRC Civil Code was officially promulgated.

INTRODUCTION

1. Which financial (not tax or labour) short-term compensation schemes for immediate losses due to social distancing measures have been implemented? For which industries/sizes of business?

Deferred Loan Repayment

This is often a question for faced by office-holders of insolvent companies when investigating a company’s affairs, and more of a concern for former directors and shareholders when potentially facing a claim for the return of unlawful dividends or misfeasance.

TV rental business, Box Clever, was created as a joint venture between Granada (now ITV) and Thorn (now Carmelite).

The Box Clever business was later sold and administrative receivers were subsequently appointed over Box Clever companies.

The Pensions Regulator (“TPR”) issued Financial Support Directives (“FSDs”) against five ITV companies in relation to the Box Clever defined benefit pension scheme. ITV referred the determinations to the Upper Tribunal.

In the wake of the Carillion insolvency and the Toys R Us administration, there are contrasting tales from two different UK businesses.

The engineering business Rolls-Royce is going against the trend and has announced that it will keep its defined benefits pension scheme open for current members until January 2024.

The scheme is running at a £1.4 billion surplus, which will also allow the company to decrease its contributions to its defined benefit retirement fund by £145 million over the next three years.

At the start of 2017, UK businesses had reported a 33% risk of insolvency, compared to the end of 2017 which saw that figure increase to nearly 40%.

These figures were calculated by drawing together key performance indicators including balance sheets and records of the directors’ successful (or unsuccessful) directorship history.

What happens if a debtor is made bankrupt after a creditor has issued debt recovery proceedings?

A bankruptcy debt is any debt that the bankrupt owed to the relevant creditor at the date of the bankruptcy order, or a debt which arises under an obligation incurred by the debtor before the bankruptcy order, but one which falls due after the date of the bankruptcy order (known as contingent debts).

The Insolvency Service has just released its personal insolvency statistics for 2017 revealing an upturn in overall personal insolvencies (just under 10% more than in 2016) and an increase of around 1/5th (19.8% on 2016) of people entering into Individual Insolvency Arrangements (IVAs). More people entered into IVAs last year than in 2008 (when many consider the credit crunch took its grip).