In Re Proex Logistics, 2025 ONSC 51, Justice Steele of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) recently made a number of holdings related to the process for trustees accepting claims in a bankruptcy and other parties seeking to challenge those decisions. The Court held that:

Two recent Supreme Court of Canada decisions demonstrate that the corporate attribution doctrine is not a one-size-fits-all approach.

In a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Poonian v. British Columbia (Securities Commission), the Court determined that while disgorgement orders made by the British Columbia Securities Commission (the “Commission”) survive bankruptcy under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (the “BIA”), administrative penalties may not.

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.

With two decisions (No. 1895/2018 and No. 1896/2018), both filed on 25 January 2018, the Court of Cassation reached opposite conclusions in the two different situations

The case

The Constitutional Court (6 December 2017) confirmed that Art. 147, para. 5, of the Italian Bankruptcy Law does not violate the Constitution as long as it is interpreted in a broad sense

The case

With the decision No. 1195 of 18 January 2018, the Court of Cassation ruled on the powers of the extraordinary commissioner to require performance of pending contracts and on the treatment of the relevant claims of the suppliers

The case