When can shareholders also have employee status?

Many commercial landlords will currently be dealing with issues arising out of their tenants' financial difficulties, in particular the impact of insolvency proceedings. For tenants who are in administration, a moritorium applies, which will prevent a landlord taking action against the tenant without leave from the Court. Generally, the Courts will have a degree of sympathy for landlords, and will afford significant weight to the landlords’ proprietary rights when deciding whether to allow landlords to commence proceedings against a tenant.

In Masri v Consolidated Contractors (Oil and Gas) Company SAL – Butterworths Law Direct 6.2.09 a receivership order had been made, paragraph 15 of which stated that 'Nothing in this order shall, in respect of assets located outside England and Wales, require the defendants and/or their directors to disobey the order of any court of competent jurisdiction in relation to such assets'.

In (1) James Robert Tucker (2) Jeremy Spratt (Joint Supervisors of Energy Holdings (No 3)(in liquidation) v Gold Fields Mining LLC [2009] EWCA Civ 173 the Joint Supervisors (JS) of a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) appealed against a decision that they had wrongly excluded a claim form on the grounds that it had been out of time.

The insolvency legislation has laid the foundations for a rescue approach towards companies, which are facing insolvency. One such regime is administration. The administrator is sometimes referred to as the "company doctor". The administrator is given extensive powers to administer the affairs of the company in order to save the company from being wound up or at least, to maximise the financial position for the company's creditors.

We look at the recent case of Barlow Clowes International Ltd & Ors v Henwood [2008] EWCA Civ 577 which considers when a domicile of origin can be revived.

Background

The Court of Appeal in Haine v Secretary of State for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform has held that where redundancies are made in breach of obligations to carry out collective consultation and the employer then goes into insolvency, a protective award subsequently ordered by an employment tribunal is a debt in the liquidation.

Impact on employers

In its judgment in Haine v Sec of State for BERR and the liquidator of Compounds Section Ltd the Court of Appeal has decided an important question on employer insolvency.

Where a receiver of an insolvent company brings an unsuccessful claim, a personal costs order will not be made against the receiver unless there are exceptional circumstances making it just to do so.

A recent court decision has finally clarified the law relating to bankruptcy after the conclusion of ancillary relief proceedings, after a significant period of uncertainty. The Court of Appeal in the case of Haines v Hill has decided that a property transferred to a wife in ancillary relief proceedings should, in the absence of fraud or collusion, remain safe even in the swift event of her former husband’s bankruptcy.