Fulltext Search

Lawyers occasionally wonder how the law ended up as it is. We had that experience after the Dutch Supreme Court’s decision of 1 July 2022 (Rabobank/Ten Berge q.q.; ECLI:NL:HR:2022:984), regarding the possibility or impossibility of pledging a claim. The Supreme Court decided that claims that have been made non-transferable under property law in a contractual agreement between a creditor and a debtor, cannot be pledged either.

Since 9 January 2022, the public type of the Dutch Scheme is automatically recognized in the EU under the European Insolvency Regulation. This will be further discussed in this blog.

Last year saw the introduction of the Dutch Scheme (we refer to our previous blogs for further details on the Dutch Scheme).

Yesterday the Government confirmed that the restrictions on the presentation of winding up petitions would be lifted on 30 September 2021, as planned.

However, designed to assist small companies in their recovery from the pandemic, the new regulations coming into force on 29 September 2021 have been drafted with the aim of protecting businesses from creditors demanding repayment of relatively small debts. The key difference is the temporary raising of the threshold for a winding up petition to £10,000, a drastic increase from £750.

On 28 June 2021, the Minister of Justice presented a draft temporary bill on transparency of expedited liquidations (de tijdelijke wet transparantie turboliquidatie). As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Minister expects that there will be an increase in the number of businesses that will need to be liquidated. Under Dutch law, the most efficient way to do this is through expedited liquidation (turboliquidatie). However, as the expedited liquidation barely provides for safeguards to creditors, it is often considered a mechanism that is open for abuse.

In 2014, Accelerated Payment Notices (“APNs”) were introduced by the Government under the Finance Act 2014, allowing HMRC to request upfront payments on account of disputed tax and/or National Insurance contributions relating to certain tax avoidance schemes.

The worldwide Covid 19 pandemic has touched and affected us all in many different ways. In this blog I will look at how those of us who work in debt recovery need to take on board the impact the pandemic has had on mental health and factor that into their strategies. Mental health cannot be ignored as my partner, Cory Bebb, wrote in his recent blog

Amplifying JCAM Commercial Real Estate Property XV Ltd v Davis Haulage Ltd [2018] EWCA CIV 276 the court has again considered repeated Notices of Intention to Appoint (NOITA) and the effect on the interim moratorium.

Background

This case involved the Company filing 4 successive NOITAs although only two of them were the subject of these proceedings (NOITA 1 and NOITA 2).

The Company owned a Property which was subject to a legal mortgage and QFC. The secured loan was in default and the Company was seeking to delay enforcement whilst it refinanced.

The proposed new regulations to safeguard the proprietary of pre-packs have caused alarm in the profession, one of the areas of concern being the requirement that the Evaluator central to the process requires no professional qualifications but thankfully are qualified if they think they are (yes, you did detect some sarcasm).

The Regulations will mean that an administrator cannot execute a pre-pack if the following applies:

On 1 January 2021, the Act on confirmation of private restructuring plans (Wet homologatie onderhands akkoord, the “Dutch Scheme“) came into effect. At time of writing (25 February 2021), the Dutch courts have rendered 10 judgments in connection with the Dutch Scheme. This blog provides you with the highlights of this case law.

1. General observations