The BVI Commercial Court (the Honourable Justice Davis-White QC [Ag]) has recently ordered the appointment of liquidators over Pacific Andes Enterprises (BVI) Limited, Parkmond Group Limited, and PARD Trade Limited (the “Companies”), three BVI incorporated companies forming a key part of the China Fishery Group.
The applications were unsuccessfully contested on the principal ground that the appointment of liquidators would irretrievably damage the prospects of a wider, global restructuring of the Pacific Andes Group.
On 22 February 2019 and 26 February 2019 two bills were introduced in the Bulgarian parliament to amend the existing Bank Insolvency Act (“Bills”).
Banks in Bulgaria are seriously concerned with borrowers fraudulently manipulating their accountancy books with the effect that banks’ security interests are declared invalid and banks are declassed into ordinary (unsecured) insolvency creditors.
On 24 March 2015, the Bulgarian parliament promulgated an emergency insolvency law that makes almost all of the major effects of insolvency proceedings applicable to Corporate Commercial Bank, even as the court proceedings on the application for commencement of insolvency against the bank continue. In accordance with the new law, on 25 March 2015 the court appointed temporary insolvency administrators to that bank vested with broad powers to recover assets of the bank.
The Bulgarian Corporate Commercial Bank ("CCB")’s insolvency has resulted in a variety of changes to the Bulgarian banking legislation. Lifting of bank secrecy in cases of bank insolvency is the newest addition to the pile of governmental attempts at accountability and transparency stemming from the CCB affair.
The 2014 collapse of the Corporate Commercial Bank (ranked 4th in the country) raised doubts about the accuracy of the overall liquidity ratio (34.80%) and asset value (approx. EUR 44.07 billion) of the banking sector in Bulgaria, not least because assets had been evaluated according to the internal rules of the respective credit institutions.
Proposed amendments to the Recovery and Restructuring of Credit Institutions and Investment Intermediaries Act, effective as of 14 August 2015 (“Recovery and Restructurings Act”) provide that stress tests should be carried out for insurers and reinsurers. If approved by the Parliament, the changes will necessitate the organising and performing of stress tests for insurers and reinsurers within a tight timeframe, by the end of 2016.
Fraudulent debtors are trying to use a disputable interpretation of Article 37, para 4 of the Special Pledges Act on the outcome of enforcement over a special pledge against the rights of secured mortgage creditors.
The Bulgarian legislator is notorious for leaving gaps in enacted legislation. Often such legal gaps combined with inexperience, or even worse – corruption of judges, lead to questionable judgments being handed down. Several of these judgments have put mortgage creditors at risk of losing their collateral in the past year.
Rebeka Kleytman was a co-author of this article.
Almost two decades after being adopted following the model of the World Bank and UNCITRAL for non-possessory registered pledges, the Special Pledges Act (the "Act") was substantially amended at the end of 2016. Most of the amendments take immediate effect while those concerning the digitalization of the Central Register of Special Pledges (the "Register") will come into force on 1 September 2018.
Overcollateralization
As the COVID scourge continues its march across the lives and livelihoods of Canadian individuals and businesses, the federal government has broken the glass and deployed into the economy a historically unprecedented amount of emergency funding in an effort to provide a financial bridge through the crisis to affected enterprises.