The recent restructuring of Autodis, a French car parts company, is a perfect illustration of the positive consequences of the reform of the French bankruptcy code in effect since February 15, 2009. The combined use of the French conciliation procedure for the operating company and the French safeguard procedures for the holding companies were agreed upon between the debtor and its creditors pursuant to the first pre-pack agreement executed in France.

Background

Burns & Agnew v Commissioner of the Inland Revenue and Strategic Finance Limited (in rec) concerned a dispute between a secured creditor and the IRD (as a preferential creditor) in respect of certain funds received by the liquidators of Takapuna Procurement Limited (TPL).  The liquidators applied to the High Court for directions as to the application of those funds and this required the Court to undertake an analysis of the concept of an "account receivable" for the purposes of determining whether such funds could be applied to satisfy preferential claims under the Seventh

It is not uncommon for a receiver, liquidator or competing creditor to be presented with a security agreement, the ink on which appears scarcely to be dry.

If that secured creditor registered on the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) months or years earlier, does that registration date determine priority between competing security interests?  Or is that unfair to other creditors?

Case law on the new insolvent transactions regime is scarce, even though the changes were introduced three years ago. The High Court's recent decision in Blanchett v McEntee Hire Holdings Limited examines, for the first time in New Zealand, central principles in the new voidable transactions regime.

Intoduction

With the credit crunch impacting the Russian banking sector and Russian banks facing their gravest crisis since 1998 (as evidenced by Bank Globex freezing deposits), it is in our view timely to revisit the regulations affecting the insolvency of Russian credit organisations.

The Russian insolvency legislation mainly consists of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation (the Civil Code) and the Federal Law No. 127-FZ on insolvency (bankruptcy) dated 26 October 2002 (the Insolvency Law), the principal legislation on insolvency in the Russian Federation.

On March 10, 2017, Singapore's Parliament approved the Companies (Amendment) Bill 2017 ("Act") to enhance the country's corporate debt restructuring framework. The Act was assented to by President Tony Tan Keng Yam on March 29, 2017, and became effective after it was published in the Singapore Government Gazette on March 30, 2017.

Under the current Debtor Rehabilitation and Bankruptcy Act (“Debtor Rehabilitation Act”), even if a debtor’s debt is reduced or exempted when a rehabilitation plan is approved, this does not affect the debt of a guarantor who jointly bears certain obligations with such debtor (“Joint Guarantor”) (Debtor Rehabilitation Act, §250(2)).

Royal Decree-Act 11/2017 of 23 June, on urgent measures for financial matters

Companies restructuring under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (“CCAA”) depend on a supply of critical products and services in order to continue operations during the proceedings. An interruption in the supply of such goods and services would likely be fatal to any restructuring. Prior to 2009, the CCAA was silent about how the post-filing supply of such goods and services was to be obtained. The CCAA provided only that a supplier could not be forced to supply on credit.