As we reported in a client mailshot earlier this week, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court has made important amendment to its rules. The amendments are immediately in force and deal with a number of areas including appeal procedure, costs capping and costs orders.

Summary

On 1 July 2009, UNCITRAL adopted the Practice Guide on Cross-Border Insolvency Cooperation. The Practice Guide provides a useful reference source on some practical aspects of cooperation and communication to deal with many of the conflicts and tensions between stakeholders and jurisdictions inevitable in cross-border cases. To ease these tensions, it is often essential for creditors and, importantly, the courts concerned to reach agreement about how the process will be handled.

International context

In its decision dated November 13th 2007, Madrid’s Provincial Court accepted the appeal against a decision delivered by Madrid´s Mercantile Court (number 6), which denied the adoption of civil precautionary measures, which were requested together with an action for joint and several liability against the administrators of Afinsa.

The precautionary measure requested was the preventive freezing of assets from the administrators in order to prevent possible concealment actions.

Summary and implications

Now, more than at any other time of this economic cycle, landlords are faced with the prospect of dealing with tenants who have entered one of the various stages of insolvency and require straightforward solutions to bring their tenancy to an end. Often landlords wish to;

A husband and wife jointly owned their property. In matrimonial proceedings, the husband was ordered to transfer his interest in the property to the wife. Following his bankruptcy, the husband’s trustee applied to set aside the property transfer on the basis that it had been made at an undervalue, and the wife had given no consideration in money or money’s worth within the meaning of s339 of the Insolvency Act 1986. The wife contended that the fact that she had foregone ancillary relief claims was capable of amounting to consideration.

In a recent decision issued by Lord Drummond Young, one of the Scottish insolvency judges in the Court of Session, useful guidance has been issued which will be of interest to practitioners having to deal with the, not uncommon, situation of a retiring practitioner and replacement with a current partner in the same firm.

The High Court has considered the payment of business rates as expenses in new-style administrations. Business rates in respect of premises occupied by a company during the course of its administration are ‘necessary disbursements’ under rule 2.67(1)(f) and payable as expenses of the administration, as they are in a liquidation under rule 4.218(1)(m). Rates for unoccupied premises would also appear to be payable as administration expenses, although not as liquidation expenses.

IN RE: ALTHEIMER & GRAY (April 15, 2010)

The FDIC voted to extend the safe harbor provided under 12 C.F.R. § 360.6 until September 30, 2010, from the FDIC’s ability, as conservator or receiver, to recover assets securitized or participated out by an insured depository institution. When the safe harbor was initially adopted in 2000, the FDIC provided important protections for securitizations and participations by confirming that, in the event of a bank failure, the FDIC would not try to reclaim loans transferred into such transactions so long as an accounting sale had occurred.

In a 113-page decision issued on February 11 (the "District Court Decision"), the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (Gold, J.) delivered a blistering rebuke to the Florida Bankruptcy Court (Olson, J.) when it quashed the portions of the famous / infamous 2009 TOUSA decision (the "Trial Decision") holding the so-called "Transeastern Lenders" liable for fraudulent transfers in connection with T