The Insolvency Service (in reply to a letter from R3) has confirmed that it will be reframing its view of the term "creditor". This follows the cases last year of Pindar and Toogood where the court was asked to consider whether a paid secured creditor should have consented to an administration extension and therefore, in the absence of consent, whether the extensions were valid in both cases, the judges confirmed that the consent of paid secured creditors was not required.

Restructuring Plans (RPs)

2024 was a year of firsts for RPs, and as case law in this area continues to evolve, there is little doubt that this will carry through into 2025.

It would be remiss not to expect to see more RPs in 2025. News of Thames Water's restructuring is "splashed" all over the press and Speciality Steel's plan might see the first "cram up" of creditors, but there seems a long way to go to get creditors onside.

The below sets out key considerations when dealing with an extension of an administration at the end of the first-year anniversary.

Categorisation of a charge as fixed or floating will have a significant impact on how assets are dealt with on insolvency and creditor outcomes.

Typical fixed charge assets include land, property, shares, plant and machinery, intellectual property such as copyrights, patents and trademarks and goodwill.

Typical floating charge assets include stock and inventory, trade debtors, cash and currency, movable plant and machinery (such as vehicles), and raw materials and other consumable items used by the business.

In a decision rendered on June 6, 2022, Justice Sotomayor authored the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the case Siegel v. Fitzgerald, holding that a statutory increase in United States Trustee’s fees violated the “uniformity” requirement of the Bankruptcy Clause set forth in Article I, § 7, cl. 4 of the United States Constitution, which empowers Congress to establish “uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States.”1  

On October 12, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court denied, without comment, a petition for a writ of certiorari in a case challenging the doctrine of equitable mootness. Equitable mootness has been described as a “narrow doctrine by which an appellate court deems it prudent for practical reasons to forbear deciding an appeal when to grant the relief requested will undermine the finality and reliability of consummated plans of reorganization.”1 By his petition, David Hargreaves—an unsecured noteholder of debtor Nuverra Environmental Solutions Inc.

On December 12, 2019, the Third Circuit issued a decision in In re Odyssey Contracting Corp., finding a debtor-subcontractor had waived its right to appeal from a bankruptcy court’s order directing the prime contractor and the debtor-subcontractor to resolve an adversary proceeding in accordance with a stipulation entered into by the parties and approved by the bankruptcy court prior to trial.  This ruling has implications for all parties litigating in the Third Circuit, as the Odyssey ruling makes clear that parties who enter into stipulated agreements that depend on

The District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled that a trustee could not amend a complaint to add federal constructive fraudulent transfer claims because those claims were preempted by the safe harbor provision of the Bankruptcy Code.^[1]  The District Court found, under a plain language reading of the safe harbor provision, 11 U.S.C.

In May, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a much anticipated decision in Garvin v. Cook Investments NW, SPNWY, LLC, 922 F.3d 1031 (9th Cir.

Last month, a federal district court affirmed a bankruptcy court’s ruling that an ex-NFL player’s potential future recovery from a concussion-related class action settlement agreement was shielded from the reach of creditors in the former player’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceeding.  The ruling turned on the bankruptcy court’s finding that the potential future settlement payments were more akin to a disability benefit, which is exempt under Florida law, than a standard tort settlement, which is not.

Background